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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312557">Drive My Way</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schatz2020/pseuds/Schatz2020'>Schatz2020</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Drive My Way [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Sexual Situations, Awkward Tension, Bottom Charles Xavier, Bottom Erik Lehnsherr, Drunk Charles Xavier, Drunk Erik Lehnsherr, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, English, Erik Has Feelings, Erik Lehnsherr Loves Charles Xavier, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Erik You Slut, Erik is a smartass, Established Relationship, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, From Sex to Love, Gay Sex, M/M, Medical Procedures, Medical Professionals, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, POV Charles, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Public Sex, Raven is so cool, Sarcasm, Sexual Humor, Smitten Charles Xavier, Smitten Erik, Surgeons, Surgery, Tags Contain Spoilers, Top Charles Xavier, Top Erik Lehnsherr, car races</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:49:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,431</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312557</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schatz2020/pseuds/Schatz2020</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is a brilliant, successful surgeon whose casual encounters, although satisfying, are no longer enough .<br/>His decision to spend a Saturday with his sister Raven will lead him to meet Erik, a sexy, cheeky and irresistible racing driver.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Drive My Way [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072946</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Drive My Way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">

        <li>
          Translation into Italiano available: 
            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28183392">Drive my Way_ITA</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schatz2020/pseuds/Schatz2020">Schatz2020</a>
        </li>


    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>WARNING***WARNING***WARNING***<br/>Please read carefully:</p><p>Chapter 1 is the original story</p><p>Chapter 2 is the alternate ending. Inside chapter 1 you will find a note + *** so that you know where chapter 2 starts from.</p><p>Chapter 3  basically wrote itself after chapter 2 was finished.</p><p> </p><p>***<br/>All the medical terms and procedures are real: the author is an actual physician.</p><p>English is not my first language. I apologize for any mistake / poor choice of words</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Charles Francis Xavier was forty-one years old and had a life that was in many ways enviable. An excellent job, obtained after years of study and sacrifice. A large and comforting group of friends, a family no less normal than any other, no better or worse than most of those he had known.</p><p>He was a consultant of the Department of Bileopancreatic Surgery, a complicated name to define the work of an elite surgeon. With his team, he was in charge of a complex area of general surgery, performed masterfully in few centers in the country. The hospital he worked for was a referral hub for the kind of pathology they treated: pancreatic cancers. Almost always a terrible death sentence, excruciating and inexorable. But if one was fortunate enough to be diagnosed early enough and have the chance to be operated on by him and his boss and mentor... well, the possibility of being alive five years after such a terrible diagnosis was no longer a utopia.</p><p>He loved his work. He loved studying, publishing articles, shadowing medical students. But most of all, he loved operating. Spending ten or twelve hours bent over that operating table was what he had dreamed and longed for since he was a child, and every day he left the hospital late in the evening, after a successful duodenocephalopancreasectomy, he felt good: he was happy, satisfied and fulfilled.</p><p>He bloody loved his job, and he did it fucking well. His colleagues respected him and many envied him, but his meek and cheerful nature, disarming humor, and incredible culture had never made him an enemy. No one had ever had bad words for him, no one had ever disliked him or been openly unfair to him.</p><p>Charles had a good life and no reason not to be completely satisfied with it.</p><p>He was a handsome man. His big, sea-blue eyes had guaranteed him a lively sex life. His handsome body and Scottish accent had led him to quite a few easy conquests; his height, not exactly enviable, had perhaps brought him a few defeats, but none had been humiliating or searing enough to be remembered.</p><p>Charles had a fucking good life, as his sister Raven used to tell him.</p><p>Therefore, when he let himself slump exhausted on his couch, in front of the 60-inch TV, a scandalously overfilled glass of Laphroaig and that veiled sense of dissatisfaction that pervaded him, he couldn’t help but feel crushed by guilt and ingratitude towards the entire universe.</p><p>He had no reason to be unsatisfied. He had no valid explanation for not being damn happy.</p><p>And yet…there were nights when he would have given almost anything to be a little less cool, a little less good, and feel a little less lonely.</p><p>Sex wasn’t the problem. All he had to do, as always, was to launch Grindr and after a few clicks Hamed’s circumcised, thick and eager cock would appear, or Brian’s ass, created just to be licked all night long.</p><p>Then there was the series of ginger boys -he loved them so much- that reminded him of his vacation in Scotland. Or the Latinos from the South… so hot and tireless, perfect for threesomes.</p><p>No, sex wasn’t the problem.</p><p>There wasn’t a problem.</p><p>Just…something was missing. Someone was always missing.</p><p>Yet he fled relationships like the plague. He didn’t want to be in a relationship, didn’t want to be accountable to anyone, to share his stuff with anyone. And, no matter what, he never had time for anyone.</p><p>He always ended up laughing at himself and blaming himself for those thoughts. Because he was lonely, but he didn’t want anyone beside him. And it was already absurd to think that, to say it out loud was an insult to the most basic form of intelligence.</p><p>But there he was. Wistful on his couch, drunk on whisky and undecided whether or not to write to some Logan: a sort of stud with a hairy chest and muscles everywhere. He wasn’t exactly the kind of man that attracted Charles at first glance, but he was only a few minutes away from his flat and the minimalist and masculine social profile had struck Charles’ attention. Then there was that name and no details aside 'just fuck'.</p><p>All in all it was promising.</p><p><em>Hi</em>.</p><p>
  <strong>Hi. […] Hey big eyes… just like Katy Perry… I see you’re not far away.</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Yeah. That’s why I wrote you.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>So?</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>So?</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>Look, Taylor Swift, if you wannna fuck good, if you’re lonely and you want to chat, I don’t have time to waste.</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Wow. I mean: no preambles.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>Do we need them?</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Absolutely not.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>Perfect. Top or bottom?</strong>
</p><p><em>Oh, God, no. What a cliché</em>.</p><p>
  <strong>Vers. Great. Address?</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Are you a serial killer?</em>
</p><p><strong>Find out</strong>.</p><p> </p><p>Twenty minutes later Logan was in Charles’ apartment.</p><p>Naked.</p><p>Very well hung and with the right amount of brutality needed on nights like that.</p><p>As he was getting pounded hard from behind, Charles thought that the twenty-first century, Grindr, and free casual sex were gifts to be thankful for.</p><p>He could have sworn he heard Logan grunt some sort ‘fuck it’s so good', but he stayed focused on his own hand as he jerked off.</p><p>Moments later he had a satisfying orgasm straight down the hunk's throat.</p><p>He swallowed. Not bad..</p><p>“Well,” the other said, lighting a cigarette at the same time he was brushing up his somewhat démodé frayed jeans. “Maybe we’ll do it again, Baby Spice ” he proposed winking.</p><p>“My name is Charles…” he pointed with bitterness.</p><p>“Yeah, whatever.”</p><p>“Could you please stop dubbing me with those names?” Charles asked hassled.</p><p>“It’s not my fault if your big blue eyes remind me of those hot chicks!” Logan replied shrugging.</p><p>Charles rolled his eyes. He would have liked to tell Logan not to fucking smoke, that it was something he couldn’t stand. But he would have looked like a real pain-in-the-ass-loser and, all in all, Logan had been a really good fuck. It would have been a shame to burn it out right away.</p><p>“Yeah, maybe I’ll text you.”</p><p>He tried to be as detached as possible.</p><p>Logan smiled puffing smoke everywhere.</p><p>“Sure you will, Chuck!”</p><p>He greeted him by sticking a couple of ounces of Marlboro-flavored tongue in his mouth and walked out.</p><p>Charles stowed the lube in the drawer, took five minutes cursing to find one of the used condoms Logan had randomly thrown on the floor, changed the sheets, and stepped into the shower.</p><p>Having sex at home was comfortable, but disadvantageous.</p><p>He could really invite a homicidal weirdo or a deranged person, and either way, then he always ended up with the hassle of having to rearrange and clean up. At least that night he hadn’t had the difficulty of getting rid of his guest.</p><p>Charles was relaxed.</p><p>He had the day off for once. He wouldn’t have to get up early, and he would meet Raven the next day.</p><p>His sister had promised him a nice day at the racetrack in prime location. Not that he was all that excited about it, but he enjoyed spending time with her. She would be on call, as a critical care physician, during practice for he couldn’t remember which car race. She wouldn’t have to do anything but attend. No serious accidents ever happened: the day would be about them.</p><p>With a slightly sore butt he turned on his side. The somewhat uncouth stud to be praised for that.</p><p>Charles smiled and fell asleep.</p><p>He would not see the message until the next morning:</p><p>
  <strong>Great ass, Katyperry.</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Charles waited for Raven in front of the service entrance of the racetrack. He read Logan’s message again, snickering: he wasn’t going to reply, not right away. Nor would he have said thank you. Surely Logan was the type who was used to being chased and Charles didn’t want to play the part of the one who was easily impressed. Or, more likely, someone like Logan didn’t give a rat’s ass about Charles’ answers and was already banging the paperboy…</p><p>Raven caught up to Charles without him noticing.</p><p>“Who the hell is Logan! Let’s see the pictures! Right now!”</p><p>Charles winced. What the fuck!</p><p>“Jesus Christ, Raven! You scared the shit out of me!”</p><p>“One of these days they’re going to call me because they found you in pieces in a suitcase, Charles! I wonder how you can still be alive…” his sister said skeptically while rolling her eyes.</p><p>Charles nudged her with amusement.</p><p>Indeed, he could be a real fool sometimes, with his head lost in a parallel world.</p><p>They walked in and Raven took up her duties meeting her emergency medical response team. They all wore a fireproof suit uniform which she wore fastened by the sleeves at the waist, boots, and ID bracelets. Charles had special permission to be with them at the edge of the runway. The first aid station was next to the pit of one of the car teams. Charles read it was Porsche.</p><p>“What are we about to watch?” he asked his sister.</p><p>Raven was seven years younger. She was a gorgeous thirty-four year old blonde and she was very sexy. She never wore too much make-up and that made her look younger. A hot body with generous breasts and a naturally red mouth like Charles’. It was the only thing they had in common, inherited from their mother.</p><p>They didn’t have the same father. Raven’s was taller. For this reason she reached her brother’s height with ease even before she was a teenager.</p><p>Raven was the only woman Charles had ever found attractive erotically. Had she not been his sister, he would have gladly tried heterosexual sex with her but, fortunately, they shared half the DNA and that had preserved him from accidentally slipping into her vagina.</p><p>“We’re going to watch a boring and endless qualifying round of the European Le Mans Series. A useless and boring race where these idiots -she gestured generically to encompass the track- drive for four hours without stopping” she concluded, handing Charles his first coffee of the day.</p><p>Charles smiled lovingly at her. He loved Raven’s way of doing things: she was always funny and friendly, always smiling -unlike him- and always at ease wherever she was. It was no coincidence that she was a critical care physician and he was a surgeon: they were quintessential medical opposites. But Charles was in fact an atypical surgeon. Raven described him as strangely intelligent and studious for a butcher. Someone with whom she could talk about medicine without having the impression of interacting with a bozo as smart as cow.</p><p>Charles sat down next to her and couldn’t avoid wincing.</p><p>“Ouch, someone’s got a sore ass here! C’mon tell me: that Logan guy?” she asked leaning into Charles.</p><p>“None of your business!” he tried without confidence. But he quickly took the phone out of his pocket and launched Grindr. “Look!” he told her showing Logan’s pictures on the app.</p><p>“Oh my… Wow! What a hunk! What’s he like?”</p><p>“Some kind of Australian sex machine!”</p><p>They laughed.</p><p>“You do use precautions, don’t you?”</p><p>“Don’t ask stupid questions! You heterosexuals are the ones with STDs, mind you,” Charles instructed knowingly.</p><p>Raven rolled her eyes and huffed.</p><p>The trial had started. They put on their headphones and for half an hour they were bored to death watching the cars whizzing around the track.</p><p>With all that noise they couldn’t even talk for a while and, at least for a decent amount of time, Raven couldn’t leave her seat and walk away. Charles picked up his phone again and fooled around on Instagram. He then wrote a couple of tweets in response to a scientific discussion, and finally opened Grindr again, more out of boredom than with the real intent to hook up.</p><p>There were more members than expected in the nearby. The racing world was teeming with gays…interesting.</p><p>He looked up and met the eyes of a security guard not far away. The bald, gigantic man winked at him. He was so pumped up on steroids and cross-fit sessions that Charles thought he’d see him levitate at any moment. His neck was as thick as one of Charles’ thighs, and Charles was certainly not considered skinny… on the contrary.</p><p>There was no way he could have slept with The Rock’s ugly copy! He played dumb and ignored him. The behemoth seemed to take the blow and walked away shortly thereafter. There were three or four other men online, maybe it would have been wiser to leave the app at that moment. Before closing, he checked Logan’s profile again, snickered and replied to the message.</p><p>
  <em>Yours looks promising, too…</em>
</p><p>He put the phone back in his jeans.</p><p>Charles didn’t want to play the part of a desperate, needy bottom. Not with a stud like Logan!</p><p>Besides, frankly, Charles would have gladly fucked that firm-as-marble ass.</p><p>Suddenly he felt people stir around him. One of the cars had swerved wrong on the angle of the curve coming out. At the next corner, closer to them, the driver made the same mistake again, but this time he cut cleanly into the path of the green and black Porsche team car, which stood up all of a sudden. Even Raven and her EMS people flinched.</p><p>The driver in the Porsche 911 Rsr lost control of the vehicle, spun very quickly, slammed into the side guards with a resounding crash and ended up crashing a second time on the opposite side of the track, not far from where his team and the rescue squad were standing.</p><p>There was great excitement. Charles was impressed: everything had been very fast. The car was in a thousand pieces, for sure the driver would be in serious condition. Immediately the stop signs appeared and the safety car stopped the trial. The fire-fighting and safety team immediately ran towards the crashed car. The team’s technicians and mechanics talked excitedly by radio to the driver, but Charles could not tell if they were getting adequate responses or if they were those of a dying man.</p><p>Shortly thereafter, Raven’s team took to the track. They too were wearing protective helmets and heavy gloves. Charles wondered how his sister was able to work with those impediments, but she seemed perfectly comfortable and able to intubate an ant upside down between the layers of metal. By the time Raven arrived at the wrecked car, the fire crew had already extracted the driver from the cockpit. She stood in front of him, and Charles watched as she spoke quickly to the man standing upright; he first nodded twice, then responded by shaking his head to another question from the woman.</p><p>He was on his feet! On his feet for heaven’s sake! After a crash like that. Raven tilted her head and Charles realized she was smiling at him. She walked past the pilot and checked the cockpit, pointed out a couple of details to her team, then went back to the man and pat his shoulder a couple of times, he nodded again.</p><p>At a thumbs-up, go-ahead gesture from his sister, the driver straddled a large scooter that took him back toward the Porsche pit.</p><p>Raven immediately re-entered with the other rescuers.</p><p>She reached Charles and removed her helmet: she was sweaty, but still hot as fuck. She waved her hand through her curly blonde hair to give herself a better look.</p><p>“Pheew! That went well,” she exclaimed when she was next to her brother.</p><p>Charles was still stunned. He thought he was witnessing a scene of tears and blood with amputated limbs and CPR in place, but instead that driver had serenely exited the car basically on his own.</p><p>“Crazy! I thought he was dead!”</p><p>“Are you kidding! No part of the cockpit was deformed. It wasn’t a big crash,” Raven explained to him.</p><p>“That’s why you were controlling the car… I wonder what a big crash must be like, then!”</p><p>“Much, much worse, Charles!”</p><p>Raven drank an entire bottle of water in one breath, then dropped back in her chair. She looked up at his brother with a sly, knowing look.</p><p>“You know, the pilot… he has those eyes! And a beautiful voice. I think he’s of German descent from his last name and accent. Did you see how tall he is?”</p><p>Charles grinned and turned back to the Porsche team pit, maybe they would be able to see him.</p><p>“Do you think we can get closer?” he asked.</p><p>“Why not!”</p><p>Imagine that…his sister giving up the chance of looking at, or luring, someone who could potentially be a handsome man to her!</p><p>Charles followed her as she quickly approached the Porsche team.</p><p>They saw the team around the driver, helping him remove his HANS collar and gloves. For crying out loud, his hands were beautiful...</p><p>The team freed him from the safety cables and sensors and then from the helmet. He remained for a few moments with the helmet on, which allowed a glimpse only of his eyes: they were clear, perhaps gray. Charles could not understand well from that distance. The man began to fumble with the zipper of his suit. He took off the under-helmet and rolled the suit up to his waist, remaining wrapped in the tight light gray thermal jersey. He had his back to them, they were two beautiful shoulders: wide and muscular. He had very short reddish-brown hair. A minimalist, military haircut.</p><p>And then he turned around. Charles forgot to breathe for at least thirty seconds.</p><p>He was handsome. He was the sexiest man Charles had ever seen. He had a perfect face, with strong but delicate features. The eyes, now surrounded by that handsome face, were even more beautiful, magnetic, expressive and attentive. The wide mouth, so damn promising.  A mechanic said something in his ear and he broke into a smile. Literally. Because that huge mouth of his really did open into the biggest smile Charles had ever seen, with the highest number of teeth a human being had ever had. The thermal shirt was stretched by the muscles in his chest, wrapping around him like a second skin, outlining his nipples and abs as if he were naked.</p><p>Charles imagined him undressed and could only think of himself as he licked those pecs.</p><p>Raven was in the throes of the same lust as his brother. Both of them looked like two victims of some kind of spell: still with wide open eyes and mouth agape, unable to move. Charles swallowed.</p><p>“Jesus Christ what a hunk!” was the only thing that came out of his mouth.</p><p>Raven began to pray looking up, at the sky. “I beg you, Lord, don’t let him be a fag! I’ll be good!”</p><p>Charles looked at her amused.</p><p>“No, dear Lord, hear me: let him be a complete fag and I promise I won’t be good, but I’ll do <em>him</em> some good…some great good!”</p><p>Raven burst out laughing with her typical ringing, infectious laughter. They heard her in the Porsche box and turned around. Even the driver’s attention was drawn to that joyful noise.</p><p>There you go… now the hunk would see his sister and, at the end of her shift, Charles would be forced to wait for her in the blistering cold while she got fucked in one of the locker rooms. Maybe if he was lucky it would all end in a quick blowjob...</p><p>The coolest pilot in the world was approaching them quickly, followed by some of the green-and-black team members.</p><p>Maybe Raven wouldn’t have to wait until the end of the shift.</p><p>He was smiling. There were teeth everywhere.</p><p>Raven was glowing. He looked directly at her and wouldn’t stop smiling. Bollocks!</p><p>“Thank you!” he said when he was close enough. He had a blunt, edgy accent. Charles couldn’t read the last name on the rolled up suit.</p><p>“Good thing you’re smart enough not to have forced me to do my job. I wouldn’t have forgiven you. You’re still okay, yeah?”</p><p>Raven was great at picking up men. She was a queen of seduction.</p><p>“Yeah, thanks Doc.”</p><p>Teeth.</p><p>And gray eyes. Gray and blue like the sky in January. They weren’t looking at Raven,though. They were looking at Charles who had meanwhile flanked his sister to see up close at least, as a consolation prize.</p><p>Xavier smiled tightly using his best weapon: big blue eyes.</p><p>“Erik, Erik Lehnsherr” said the German -because he was German!- extending his hand towards Raven, but holding his gaze towards Charles.</p><p>The girl caught on immediately. Screw it. Imagine if a handsome 40 year old man with no wedding ring on his finger weren’t another goddamn queer! Look at the way he’s undressing Charles with his eyes! And sure, stupid Charles hasn’t even noticed it yet.</p><p>“How do you do, Dr. Raven Marko. This is my brother, Dr. ...”</p><p>“Charles. Just Charles, hi.”</p><p>“Erik…” the pilot said again.</p><p>They shook hands for more seconds than normal. Just enough time to allow Raven to roll her eyes impatiently and Charles to blush despite his confident nature. The guy really was too cool! And he wasn’t fucking looking at Raven anymore!</p><p>And that body! The shirt was so tight that it even highlighted the V of his groin. Up close Charles could enjoy the sight of those perfect arms, the huge biceps, the raised veins on his forearms.</p><p>Oh my! He was about to get an erection like in high school! When Tony Stark, that jerk, had started nibbling on Charles’ ear and whispering obscenities and then engulfed him in his first, very wet kiss. Charles had come in his underwear without even touching.</p><p>Twenty-seven years later he was experiencing the same emotions.</p><p>Erik… Jesus H. Christ! What a hunk!</p><p>“We have to go, Lehnsherr!”</p><p>It was the voice of the team leader.</p><p>Erik slowly disengaged from the handshake, smiled at Raven again, and then looked back at Charles.</p><p>“It was a pleasure just-Charles,” he said softly, instinctively licking his lips.</p><p>When he was enough far away Raven flared up. “No, honestly! Come on! Fuck! Shit! Fuck!”</p><p>“Raven!” Charles tried to be serious, but he was about to burst out laughing without restraint. He would have howled with joy.</p><p>“No shit! Fuck you! You guys are a plague! What is that? An infectious disease?!” She was angry as fuck . “Can a hunk like that be a fag!”</p><p>“Apparently yes…and keep your voice down, come on!”</p><p>“Fuck you!”</p><p>“Mmmm gladly… wait till I try to ask him!”</p><p>“I hate you…”</p><p>“Come on that’s not true!” he said hugging her and holding her tight. The day had gotten really good!</p><p>They had dinner together when Raven finished her shift assisting at the racetrack. They had not seen Erik Lehnsherr again, alas. Charles had googled him and found out that he was forty-three years old, half German and half Irish, and – sweet Lord, thank you! – he lived in London.</p><p>Meeting the sexy pilot occupied a good part of their conversation. They reconstructed all the details that made the man irresistible, and fantasized about what his flaws might be.</p><p>“He may have a tiny little weenie!” Raven grumbled as she, greedily chomped on a bao.</p><p>“Have you seen his hands!” And then he’s got a bulge that’s very promising!” Charles tried to counter.</p><p>“Fat <em>bawws</em>” she mumbled with her mouth full of food.</p><p>Charles burst out laughing.</p><p>“You’re so daft!”</p><p>They greeted each other a little tipsy from all the Chinese beer they had drunk.</p><p>“I love you, Charles!” she said squeezing him in her arms. “I wonder if you’ll ever see the Irish hunk again?”</p><p>“If I ever get to ride him I swear I’ll write you, Raven. I love you, too. I’ll talk to you soon,” he promised, kissing her cheek.</p><p>“Now what? Are you going to have some Australian beefcake?” she asked mischievously.</p><p>“Mmm, who knows!”</p><p>Raven rolled her eyes.</p><p>“Fags…”</p><p>“You envy me!”</p><p>“You can say that again, Bro!” she said as she got on the cab.</p><p> </p><p><em>Blink</em>.</p><p>The notification could wait.</p><p>
  <em>Blink. Blink.</em>
</p><p>What the hell?</p><p>
  <strong>Are you dead?/Maybe you’re dead…/Fucking shame.</strong>
</p><p>Charles smiled. So he would run after it too, if teased.</p><p>
  <em>Hello, Logan.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>Katyperry! Fancy a shag?</strong>
</p><p>Wow! That was really… perfect!</p><p>
  <em>I’ll wait for you.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>Ten minutes. The guy was becoming faster and faster.</p><p>“Hi.”</p><p>“Hi, Katyperry,” and as he greeted Charles, Logan spread him against the entry wall lifting him almost by his weight.</p><p>Suddenly Logan broke away from Charles and instead of taking him to his room or the couch, he headed to the kitchen and opened the fridge.</p><p>“You have a beer, don’t you?” he asked from behind the door, bent over at ninety degrees, his ass in the air.</p><p>Charles grabbed him by the waist tugging him.</p><p>“I didn’t bring you here to offer you a drink! Maybe later…”</p><p>Charles pushed an aroused and surprised Logan against the table. He unbuckled his ugly, oversized, tacky buckle, dropped his pants, and knelt in front of him, ready to blow him.</p><p>“Woah! Chuck! I was just stalling…you know it took me only ten minutes to get here because you have a pretty interesting almost-neighbour…”</p><p>Charles instantly recoiled, raising an eyebrow. His expression veered from surprised to disgusted.</p><p>“Don’t worry, bub, I’m a lover of cleanliness between entertainment sessions,” informed Logan.</p><p>He took a better seat against the counter and lit a cigarette.</p><p>“So, blue-eyed Katy, show me what you were about to do with that obscene mouth!”</p><p>Charles grinned and sank his face between Logan’s legs. He actually smelled like cheap aloe vera bubble bath, quite a contrast to Logan’s rough, feral character.</p><p>It was hard sex again, aiming pleasure in the fastest and most satisfying of ways.</p><p>Logan had no passive attitude, even with a cock up his ass. Charles was really fascinated by him. He was a dominant male at all times. He would decide the pace, intensity and duration. Whether he was literally fucking your mouth against your refrigerator, or riding you on your expensive couch where you thought you were in control. Charles would never have any control with Logan. And being able to let go without any responsibility, after all, was the beauty of fucking him.</p><p>After that second time Charles thought he saw Logan walk out naked on the hall, so much was his haste to leave. Charles even wondered if he had said or done something to annoy the Australian bloke. But they didn’t talk and pretty much only did what Logan allowed or requested.</p><p>“See you around, Chuck. I’m going to run now because I’m late.”</p><p>It was two in the morning. What scheduled appointments could one have at that hour? Charles didn’t ask, of course, but merely accepted an unusual and hasty kiss on the cheek, immediately accompanied by a painful slap on his butt.</p><p>Less than five minutes passed when there was another knock on the door.</p><p>“Nothing to do: missed date. It’s bad to be replaced for only one hour’s delay,” Logan explained all in one breath, heading back to the fridge and overtaking Charles, who remained as though he were frozen at the door. “Can I have that beer now or do I still have to earn it?”</p><p>Logan beamed when he finally saw the bottle of LeChouffe in the bottom shelf.</p><p>“Oh, so that you know: you were worth the delay, bub! I mean it!”</p><p>Logan had an endearing, thuggish smile, but the good kind. Logan was a filibuster through and through. One would never bring to a family dinner, because he’d end up lifting their spinster aunt’s skirt and talking about sex with their nun cousin. He’d burp loudly at dessert and engage the kids in a noisy competition. Your mother would stop talking to you, as well as your family, after finding out you’ve been queer since forever and they'd hear all the ‘<em>God, you should hear how he moans when he gets his rocks off</em>’ talk. Eventually she would no longer want you to show up at any official family event.</p><p>Charles stood and watched as Logan downed his favorite beer and lit yet another cigarette.</p><p>He shook his head and wondered how he ended up having that guy in his kitchen at night. He really thought about his family, his job, the image society had of him during the day and went back to looking at Logan: not bad.</p><p>“I’m going to take a shower…” he said simply.</p><p>“I’m coming sunshine, wait!”</p><p>Not that Charles had any doubt, seseriously. He chuckled.</p><p>
  <em>I won’t be able to walk tomorrow…</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Professor Alexander Kovač did not tolerate distractions. He was an excellent surgeon, a careful and knowledgeable teacher, but a damned demanding boss. There were days when Charles didn’t even have time to breathe, staying in the hospital for up to fifteen or sixteen consecutive hours without eating or taking a break. When he wasn’t operating, he was busy preparing for university lectures, reports, or writing articles that the professor demanded were beyond reproach. Kovač knew that Xavier was his Number One and demanded only the best from him at all times.</p><p><em>A Top Gun .</em> That’s how Kovač described Charles when talking to others. <em>Charles was always light years ahead of others even as a student!</em></p><p> </p><p>These statements flattered him greatly, but sometimes he wished he lived with less overwhelming pressure. The expectations that weighed on him were often suffocating and never left him time for himself.</p><p>He was busy with his clinical work, of course, juggling between the operating room and the inpatient ward, shadowing students, preparing university lectures for the Medical School on behalf of Kovač or for himself for the Nursing degree course . And then there was the emergency room, where he served as chief surgeon shift leader even for two weekends a month, outside consultations for the outpatient clinic.</p><p>He had very little room to cultivate interests that were outside of the medical field, including relationships with other human beings.</p><p>Of course, he would have liked to find time to establish a relationship that would allow him to not sleep alone, to come home and share dinner or a movie on the couch. Or even just be able to talk about the day with a living being other than his beloved spathiphyllum.</p><p>But people had the strange claim to require their partner’s physical presence, the incredible need to spend weekends with them, demanding that they’d be home at Christmas, birthdays, or events like weddings.</p><p>Charles often thought about the quality of his life. Especially on evenings like that, where he finally got out of the hospital and was able to check his phone in peace and find dozens of notifications including emails, messages and various apps.</p><p>He also found two calls from Raven that worried him a bit. One of her messages said: CALL ME.</p><p> </p><p>Eight hours earlier, Raven was entering her sixth hour on call in the ICU. The afternoon had begun strangely quiet after an equally serene morning. Raven was amazed, but, as it’s customary in intensive care, she kept the thought to herself. Saying it out loud would be like performing a summoning ritual for emergencies. For once, she could enjoy a hospital shift without deaths, polytrauma, or frantic calls for emergencies on the ward.</p><p>She slumped in a small chair in the doctor’s office, chatting with Steve, an orthopedic surgeon who was all muscle and no brains. Charles would have teased her for ages, but she craved escape and Steve was the ideal option.</p><p>Lucy, one of the nurses on duty, entered the room with an appealing look and a smirk on her face.</p><p>“Doc? They’re looking for you…”</p><p>“Who?”</p><p>“A guy I personally wouldn’t keep waiting for even a second!” she winked. “Gosh, you two make a gorgeous couple!”</p><p>Raven’s eyes went wide without understanding. Spending the evenings straddling Steve didn’t mean they were a couple at all, so who could Lucy be referring to?</p><p>“I don’t understand…”</p><p>“Raven, there’s a crazy hot guy outside the ward asking for you. I thought he was a special friend of yours,” the girl said regretfully. She seemed to be looking at someone who had just lost a beautiful piece of jewelry in the sea.</p><p>“Well, I have no idea who he is, but if you tell me he’s that hot…who am I to keep him waiting?” Raven asked excitedly jumping to her feet.</p><p>Erik Lehnsherr was waiting in the hallway in front of the ICU entrance. The hunk was even more handsome with his face relaxed and not creased by his helmet. He had a slightly unkempt stubble, wore a skimpy white T-shirt that underlined his lean, muscular body. Low-waisted jeans with a prominent bulge completed his lecher outfit, Raven thought. If only he wasn’t gay.</p><p>“Good to see you again, Doc!” he said in a warm voice.</p><p>“What a surprise…” Raven made a pause,  as though pretending she did not remember his name.</p><p>“Erik,” the man suggested with a hint of disappointment.</p><p>“Right: Erik Lehnsherr” she pointed out slyly. “What brings you here, pilot?”</p><p>“I’m at the hospital for some check-ups” he lied. “Just thought I’d say hello.”</p><p>Raven wondered where this was going; it was beyond question that at the race he was interested in her brother.</p><p>“That’s cute…are you okay?”</p><p>“Yeah,” he replied, massaging his neck. “A little bruised, but no big deal. How about you? You okay?”</p><p>Raven skeptically raised an eyebrow.</p><p>“Great…” she replied with polite circumspection.</p><p>“What about your brother?” Erik asked a little too quickly, swallowing right after.</p><p>Hence the reason for the surprise visit was revealed.</p><p>Damn it, Charles! Those blue eyes of yours are really irresistible!</p><p>“Charles is fine.”</p><p>Erik smiled smugly. He asked her if Charles also worked at the same hospital. Raven explained to him that he was an excellent surgeon in the Bileopancreatic Surgery Unit, that he would be stuck in the operating room for sure until the evening and that Erik wouldn’t find a Dr. Charles Marko. He and Raven had different last names, the name he was interested in was Xavier.</p><p>Erik blushed. Raven couldn’t be beaten at that game.</p><p>“Do you want his number?” she asked him bluntly.</p><p>“What? I… I don’t know, I don’t think he’d like it…”</p><p>Raven burst out laughing.</p><p>“Oh I think he will! Unless you’re straight, Erik. In that case I’ll give you <em>my</em> number…!”</p><p>Undefeated. For years.</p><p>Erik regained the clarity that a hunk like him normally would have retained from the get-go, if Dr. Marko had been a man and not a provocative, sexy blonde harpy.</p><p>“Flattered, baby. But no, thanks” he declared with a wickedly seductive grin. “I’d love to have Charles’ number, if you swear he won’t tell me to go fuck myself,” he said winking at her.</p><p>“Oh Erik! I doubt he’ll delegate anyone for that!”</p><p>Lehnsherr blushed.</p><p>Undefeated. As she always had been.</p><p> </p><p>Charles quickly pressed the quick button to call his sister.</p><p>“God! Did you seriously just finished?!” she exclaimed, answering after a couple of rings.</p><p>It was just after ten in the evening and she had been waiting for hours to talk to her brother.</p><p>“Raven, what happened?” asked Charles worriedly as he made his way to the subway stop.</p><p>“You’re not going to believe this, honey!” she snickered, keeping Charles on his toes. “I’ll be the love of your life after what I did for you today!”</p><p>Charles rolled his eyes as he took a seat in the nearly deserted wagon.</p><p>“You’re already the love of my life, hun” he declared a little sarcastically.</p><p>“The fact that you have no one else to tell this but your sister doesn’t make it very believable, my darling!”</p><p>“Are you going to tell me what the hell happened, Raven?” asked Charles impatiently. He was tired, it was late. He just wanted to go home and was afraid his sister was holding him up for something stupid that would surely irritate the hell out of him.</p><p>“I gave him your number!” she exclaimed in one breath.</p><p>“…”</p><p>“The hunk! I gave the hunk your phone number!” she explained.</p><p>“You… what?!”</p><p>Charles could <em>hear</em> Raven’s eye-roll.</p><p>“I gave your number to that hot-as-fuck pilot, Erik Lehnsherr!” she repeated, punctuating each word.</p><p>Charles’ neurons couldn’t connect. Each one of them was thinking for themselves.</p><p>Hunk.</p><p>Pilot.</p><p>Hot as fuck.</p><p>Phone number.</p><p>
  <em>Erik Lehnsherr.</em>
</p><p>Erik had Charles’ phone number.</p><p>The hunk could call him.</p><p>“But…but…” he was so tired! He couldn’t put the words together for a meaningful sentence. “Are you out of your mind?!” he finally said blushing.</p><p>His sister waited a few moments before answering him. Charles imagined her trying to hold back a few insults and counting to ten.</p><p>“Charles, love, you bring in men you met on an app after ten minutes, what’s the big deal! You understand, yes? Erik has your number. Erik came to me, with an excuse, because he clearly wants to fuck you! Now you take a breath, thank me in an emotional way to say the least, after which you think about what gift to give me. There are a pair of Louboutins, for example, that I wouldn’t mind at all,” she concluded sternly. “And check the fucking phone!” she added.</p><p>The phone! There were dozens of notifications. Maybe Erik had already looked it up, called or texted. Fuck!</p><p>“Okay, okay! IllcheckthephoneIloveyoubye”</p><p>And he hung up.</p><p>There were two missed calls from an unknown number. The last one was from half an hour earlier.</p><p>The same number had left a voicemail.</p><p>“<em>Hi Just-Charles. This is Erik. Erik Lehnsherr, the pilot you saw crash sadly at the trial. Raven gave me your number and…. Well that is…nothing… I wanted to hear from you. See you if you want to. I hope I’m not being too intrusive. We could have a drink. Give me a call. Bye.”</em></p><p>Charles listened to the message again, smiling like an idiot.</p><p>He couldn’t believe it…</p><p>He felt euphoric, no longer tired or hungry. He only wished he could have had that man in his hands right there, right now, on that train.</p><p>It was almost ten thirty. Too late?</p><p>He wrote an instant message:</p><p>
  <em>Hi Erik, I was really pleased by your message.</em>
</p><p>Erik was online. He replied immediately.</p><p>
  <strong>Hi. Well… have you been working so far?</strong>
</p><p><em>Yes, it happens sometimes</em>.</p><p>Great. Now he’ll say something like ‘give me a call soon' or ‘I’ll call you back' and he’ll disappear. People love to hang out with other people who are actually there for them.</p><p>
  <strong>Are you too tired for a beer or whatever else you want to drink?</strong>
</p><p>Some people, on the other hand, know how to optimize their time.</p><p>The truth was that, having waned from the excitement of that unexpected message, Charles was again feeling mortally wiped out from his day in the operating room. But he didn’t want to miss an opportunity like that.</p><p>The idea of going to a club after such a day was almost unbearable, but the idea of not taking the opportunity to see Erik… no way.</p><p>He had a feeling he had to seize the moment or the handsome driver would be gone in a flash.</p><p>He forced himself to stop thinking and wrote:</p><p>
  <em>I’m a wreck, but I’ll definitely have at least one beer before I go to sleep. In company it would certainly be more enjoyable.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>345 Dowson St., Apartment B.</em>
</p><p>He wrote it in a rush and pressed the send button.</p><p>He had given the hunk his home address.</p><p>Erik didn’t answer for a few minutes. Charles’ heart sank into his chest. Shit. I wonder what he was thinking.</p><p>Charles arrived home. He was heartbroken. Why wasn’t Erik answering? He was the one who had approached him. He was a man over forty, handsome and endearing. What the hell did he want if not sex?</p><p>Charles undressed to take a quick shower.</p><p>The phone vibrated.</p><p><strong>I’ll be there in fifteen minutes</strong>.</p><p> </p><p>“Hello, Charles.”</p><p>“Hi. Have a seat,” he said with a smile.</p><p>They stood still just beyond the door and looked at each other. Charles was in his t-shirt and sweatpants. His hair was damp and his eyes were red and circled with huge blue marks.</p><p>Erik, of course, looked gorgeous in his tight, a little unbottoned, black shirt and gray overcoat.</p><p>His dry, tobacco scent sent Charles over the edge.</p><p>“Sorry, about that,” Charles said pointing to himself and his apartment. “But I’m really a wreck today,” he quickly justified himself.</p><p>“We could have done this another time” Erik replied dryly. Then he saw Charles’ disappointed and embarrassed expression. “But honestly, I’m glad you invited me over for a beer” he hastened to add with a seductive smile.</p><p>Charles relaxed. He invited Erik to sit on the couch and grabbed two Trappist beers from the refrigerator.</p><p>Lehnsherr appreciated the choice. He explained how he loved Belgian beer and the high alcohol strengths.</p><p>They talked for about half an hour. Charles found out Erik had a German father and an Irish mother. He had been living alone in London since he was twenty years old. He had done all sorts of jobs during and after his engineering degree, but he had always loved cars and he had been a professional endurance pilot and test driver for about fifteen years.</p><p>He was pleasant, bright, and fucking handsome. Charles was getting more and more comfortable. They drank more beer with a higher alcohol content. They sat on the couch next to each other, shoulder to shoulder. Erik told him he was single. How was that possible? Meaning: it was perfect, but how had they ended up talking about that? Charles didn’t remember. He was fine. He was getting more and more relaxed.</p><p>He rested his head on Erik’s shoulder. He felt Erik take a deep breath and raise his arm to encircle Charles’ shoulders, Erik’s hand resting on his arm.</p><p>Erik was pleasantly agitated. He liked the man so much. He was handsome and smart and brilliant.</p><p>And his eyes…hell! He had gorgeous eyes and lips. Maybe this time it might be worth it to engage in something other than just sex. <em>Charles</em> seemed to be worth it. Erik haf been instantly smitten and had been thinking of ways to track him down since the day of the trial.</p><p>He had to use all his brazenness to show up in Dr. Marko’s department and ask her about Charles. Luckily the woman was as bright as her brother, outspoken and intelligent. He had been lucky.</p><p>Erik had hugged Charles and now gently brushed his fingers over Charles’ bare arm. Any minute now Charles would raise his head and they would kiss. Erik grinned in anticipation of the moment. And probably then they would have sex… he was thrilled to find out what it was like to sleep with Charles. How he would touch him, lick him and, why not, fuck him.</p><p>But Charles didn’t move.</p><p>Okay, he was waiting for Erik to make the first move. It always happened. Erik gave that impression every time. He was the <em>Alpha</em>. The one who took the trouble to seduce, to start the game. A shadow of melancholy crossed his mind: how much he would have liked to be taken and kissed for once…</p><p>Oh hell! He bent his head to reach Charles’ red, promising lips, erotically open and inviting.</p><p>But Charles was asleep, snoring softly.</p><p> </p><p>The cell phone was vibrating annoyingly.</p><p>Charles grumbled as he turned over and almost fell off the couch.</p><p>Fuck!</p><p>He picked up the phone: it was eight fifty.</p><p>Eight fifty in the morning?!?</p><p>Shit!</p><p>
  <em>Shit !</em>
</p><p>SHIT!</p><p>“Hello?”</p><p>“Xavier… Are you okay?”</p><p>“Professor… yes, excuse me I… I’m calling a cab. I’m sorry, really” he couldn’t formulate a whole sentence that made sense, he wished he could die.</p><p>“Charles,” Kovač interrupted him. “Take the day off” he ordered simply.</p><p>“No, really I’ll be there in no time, I’m mortified.”</p><p>“Charles” the professor interrupted patiently again. “Take the day off”. This time his tone did not admit any reply. “You’ve never been absent a day, nor have you ever been late. See you tomorrow, Charles” he concluded simply.</p><p>“Thank you, Alexander, I… uhm… really… thank you.”</p><p>“Have a good day, Charles. Please get some rest.”</p><p>And he hung up.</p><p>Fuck…</p><p>But how had this happened!</p><p>Suddenly he remembered the previous evening.</p><p>Erik!</p><p>Shit…</p><p>SHIT!</p><p>Had he fallen asleep?! He had fallen asleep?!</p><p>He couldn’t believe it…</p><p>He almost felt like crying from frustration and shame. He felt like he had been left in his underwear in front of everyone during, say, graduation.</p><p>He wanted to dig a hole and bury himself in it. Forever.</p><p>He checked his phone again: no messages.</p><p>He sighed with a whimper. He sounded like a wounded animal.</p><p>He looked around.</p><p>The bottles of beer he and Erik had drunk the night before had been neatly put away next to the recycling bin. On the couch was a blanket under which he had slept blissfully all night.</p><p>Shit…</p><p>Erik must have tucked him in and cleaned up, too.</p><p>What a horrible scene…</p><p>Charles decided to give up the last bit of dignity he had left.</p><p><em>Erik, I’m so sorry. I’m sorry about last night</em>.</p><p>Less than two minutes passed. The cell phone began to ring.</p><p>“Good morning Sleeping Beauty! Did you rest well?”</p><p>He had an amused and cheeky tone.</p><p>“Hi Erik… Sorry,” he said violently.</p><p>“Are you at work?”</p><p>“No, they gave me the day off…”</p><p>“Mhm… and do you have plans?”</p><p>Charles’ palms began to sweat. He had to fix this, no matter what.</p><p>“No. None. Can I make it up to you and buy you lunch?” he ventured.</p><p>“Lunch?” asked Erik. Charles sensed disappointment. He was right: he had invited Erik to his house at night and fallen asleep. Probably snoring and drooling on the shoulder of the sexiest man he’d ever been lucky enough to meet. What a loser…</p><p>“Well, yeah, I promise I’ll stay awake” he said laughing nervously trying to bring the conversation to a more relaxed and ironic tone.</p><p>“Charles…” said Erik seriously. “Sorry to tell you” Charles’ heart lost a beat. “My self-esteem suffered a not inconsiderable snub last night. Until now at the first date no one had ever fallen asleep. At least not <em>before</em>…and certainly not on my… <em>shoulder</em>” Lehnsherr continued. Charles felt his heart sink and sat down on the couch.</p><p>“Erik…” he began. But the other man interrupted him, “Lunch won’t be enough, dear. I’ll be there in ten minutes. At the very least you have to start with breakfast!”</p><p>He hung up.</p><p> </p><p>Charles greeted him with a smile, the best he could muster. His big sea-blue eyes were now rested and bright. He was sure they were giving it their best shot. Erik, needless to say, was if possible even sexier. The unkempt reddish beard, the tightest washed-out jeans, and… oh my! A tight black tank top underneath the overcoat.</p><p>A bucketful of sex appeal straight from the nineties! Charles gaped a few moments.</p><p>“Are you all right, doctor?” asked the amused and vain pilot.</p><p>“Everything’s fine,” replied Charles biting his lower lip.</p><p>
  <em>Oh to hell with it!</em>
</p><p>He grabbed Erik’s face firmly but not too forcefully and kissed him. Both of them had their eyes open. They were amused and excited at the same time.</p><p>“Sorry about last night,” he whispered.</p><p>“You are amazing, doctor!”</p><p>They kissed and kissed again and never had breakfast that morning.</p><p>Erik was an extremely confident man, strong in his physical appearance and the considerable size of his sex. He was used to dominating, leading the game and seducing. But in Charles’ ear he confessed how being kissed like that, without warning, had surprised and enraptured him. Xavier did not fail to note it well in his mind and maintained a dominant role throughout the morning, which greatly excited the handsome driver.</p><p>They fucked everywhere. Charles was amazed at the many ways his kitchen countertop could be used. He thought about Logan for a moment and felt a little dirty and unfaithful. He really liked himself…</p><p>At lunchtime they were still naked and exhausted in Charles’ unmade bed. The sheets were a mess. They snickered at each other and told funny sexual anecdotes about themselves, like crazy places they’d had sex or partners they were ashamed of for different reasons.</p><p>Erik was unbeatable. First of all, he had had dozens and dozens of lovers. Charles didn’t have the guts to ask him if the number was double digits.</p><p>Secondly, Erik had mated just about everywhere, but he reached the improbable when he declared, “In the room next to a chapel, during a wedding. With the groom!”</p><p>“What?!” Charles was stunned. “Come on now! This is bullshit!”</p><p>“No! I honest to God!” Erik couldn’t stop laughing. “Scott was a good friend of mine in college. He came out at his wedding, I was his best man! He confessed to me that he had always been in love with me and never had the courage to tell me,” he explained amused.</p><p>“Okay and what does that have to do with fucking on behind the altar?!”</p><p>“Well…I felt sorry for him poor chap. I gave him a blowjob. I thought that was enough, but he wanted more…” Erik confessed sneering.</p><p>“Oh my God…” Charles rolled his eyes. “And how did it end?”</p><p>“That he married Jean,” Erik said with a shrug. “And he walked very slowly and sat very little throughout the entire reception!”</p><p>They burst out laughing to tears.</p><p>“You’re full of shit!”</p><p>“No, Charles! I swear it’s all true! I fucked him from behind while being careful not to wrinkle his suit!” They laughed out loud.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>They began to hang out often. Charles’ job didn’t leave much free time, but Erik didn’t seem to be bothered by it much.</p><p>Having something of Erik’s around wasn’t as much of a problem as Charles had imagined. Allowing him to wait at home during the double shift at night had become a habit. Erik’s apartment was closer to the hospital, and Charles often slept there alone if the pilot was away on a trip.</p><p>They rarely went out, preferring to spend their time having sex, talking and laughing.</p><p>Charles had never laughed so much in his life.</p><p>“What do you say? Let’s go out tonight?” Erik proposed with enthusiasm . Of the two of them, he was the one suffering the most from the claustrophobic feeling of their recent relationship.</p><p>“But why?” Charles complained. “I want to fuck!”</p><p>He knew that with Lehnsherr it was always a valid and often winning argument.</p><p>“Come on Charles, what the hell! Let’s go get drunk and dance.”</p><p>“We’re too old for clubs, Erik…you know they call us <em>daddy</em>, right? Then you get disappointed…”</p><p>Erik pierced him with a look full of sympathy.</p><p>“Nice try, Doc. That’s you, while I’m having the time of my life. Let’s go out tonight, and don’t say a word!”</p><p>“All right. I want to go to the Ku, though. I want you to be hot as fuck, babe,” Charles said, lowering his voice a tone and pulling Erik to himself for an all-tongue-and-saliva kiss.</p><p>The Ku Bar Klub was one of the hottest clubs at the time. It was frequented by all kinds of people and this, together with the music and the gorgeous go-go boys, meant that it had won the prize for best gay club in London two years in a row.</p><p>Charles had always been comfortable in clubs, but as he grew older, he sometimes felt out of place. He looked younger than his forty-one years, but most of the men in there were twenty years younger than him, which made him a little self-conscious. On the other hand, the discomfort soon vanished when one of those guys approached him to invite him out or into the bathroom, usually offering him sex in exchange for just a couple of drinks. Erik, on the contrary, outrageously handsome and horny as he was, didn’t give a damn. Charles would watch him flirt with all kinds of guys: twinks, jocks, bears...</p><p>He would pick men up in groups and, when he didn’t have to compete in the following days, he drank like a fish. After less than an hour he was always completely wasted, out of control and unstoppable.</p><p>Charles was sipping his third cocktail sitting on a stool with his back against the bar. Next to him Erik, squeezed into a white tank top and black jeans, was making out hard with a young man of no more than twenty. Charles hoped he was at least of age. Erik laughed, all teeth, drank, and resumed sticking his tongue in the mouth of the blond kid who, completely entranced by Lehnsherr, began groping the pilot’s groin.</p><p>“Okay, Goldilocks. Bugger off now” Charles threatened.</p><p>Erik laughed. The kid cashed in and Xavier finished Lehnsherr’s drink as well.</p><p>“Hey!” he exclaimed shortly before crushing Charles against the counter and kissing him.</p><p>He tasted like cinnamon and moscow mule. It was probably the taste of the boy’s mouth from just before.</p><p>“Flocks of cocks as you always do, huh?!” Charles said sourly, being very careful to make his own pelvis adhere to Erik’s.</p><p>The atmosphere quickly heated up, their groins burst and the barman kicked them out for indecent exposure.</p><p>Erik was on a roll. He dragged Charles into the bathroom and gave him a blowjob practically in public. Charles just hoped he wouldn’t run into anyone who might recognize him, but he had so much alcohol in his system that he didn’t object and enjoyed it shamefully.</p><p>Suddenly a filibustering look caught his attention. Charles was almost at the height of his pleasure when the man pressed his stinging face against Charles’ ear.</p><p>“And I thought I was the bad boy, Katyperry!” he whispered, sucking on his earlobe.</p><p>Charles had a great orgasm: his cock in Erik’s mouth and his tongue in Logan’s.</p><p> </p><p>“You’re a slut. Who was that guy?”</p><p>“Give me a break. You made out with half the club. At least from what I could see…” Charles said in a drunken whisper.</p><p>“You know I only fuck if you’re there, too” Erik mumbled before passing out next to Charles, who was already snoring without even taking his shoes off.</p><p> </p><p>As expected, they woke up in the afternoon with a drilling headache and pains everywhere.</p><p>Charles prepared a maximum dose of ibuprofen for both of them. They were no longer of age, he had said…</p><p>Erik stood in silence, drinking a hectolitre of coffee. His beard was growing unkempt.</p><p>“You didn’t answer me… I think,” he said suddenly.</p><p>“…?”</p><p>“The guy in the bathroom. Did you know him?”</p><p>Charles looked at Erik absentmindedly, as if he’d asked about the weather.</p><p>“We’ve seen each other a few times,” he said vaguely.</p><p>“Seen?”</p><p>Charles stared at Erik, blinking eloquently with wide eyes.</p><p>“Oh. <em>Seen</em>. Now I get it”</p><p>What did he mean? What was there to understand?</p><p>Charles finished his coffee. And he sat down across from Erik.</p><p>“Do you want something exclusive?” he asked bluntly.</p><p>Erik kept with his gaze on the mug, wistful.</p><p>“I don’t know…” he replied. “I don’t know if it’s right. We see each other very little, all things considered. In three days I leave again for the French races, then the Belgian and Italian ones. And you with your job…by now I’m well aware of how much you like to having sex, Charles. And I guess you’ve figured out how much I like it. It seems to me some kind of cruelty to force both of us into abstinence.”</p><p>Charles smiled.</p><p>“I like you, Erik,” he said simply.</p><p>“I like you, too, <em>just-Charles</em>.”</p><p>“I’m serious.”</p><p>“I mean it, too.”</p><p>They kissed.</p><p>“Alright…let’s start this tour de force of solo wanking! Damn you…if my wrists hurt afterwards when I’m driving you’ll pay for it, Charles!”</p><p>“Wrists? Plural?”</p><p>“I’m ambidextrous.”</p><p>“Swear!”</p><p>Teeth and laughter.</p><p>Damn… Charles realized he was going to miss Erik so much this time.</p><p> </p><p>Raven had been dating Rogers for four months now. Unbelievable. He was kind of like Ken, body and face so perfect he looked like plastic. Smooth without a single hair. A shiver of disgust ran down Charles’ spine.</p><p>“What are you thinking with that idiotic expression?” asked Raven handing him his coffee. They had taken a quick break at the hospital cafeteria.</p><p>“I was wondering if Steve is slippery when he’s wet. Like if he slips off you when you try to squeeze him…”</p><p>“You’re a jerk!” his sister exclaimed. “Come on… look at him, he’s not just a perfect board of sculpted abs and buttocks of steel. I’m serious!”</p><p>“It’s just that I can’t picture you guys talking, I try hard, but I just can’t…”</p><p>His sister insulted him in a low voice. She and Steve didn’t talk, Raven explained. They just mated like rabbits, almost every day, shared a passion for dangerous and extreme sports, and drank gin.</p><p>Raven was serene; that was enough for Charles.</p><p>“You look melancholy. Are you okay, Bro?” she asked him softly. He always felt so loved by his sister; the only reason Charles put up with Kurt Marko’s existence was the fact that his stepfather had helped beget Raven. She was gorgeous and the two siblings together were the closest family anyone had ever seen.</p><p>Charles sighed holding up his face with his fist.</p><p>“I miss him, damn it. It’s your fault I got this way…”</p><p>“Wow! You fell in love! So you and Erik have upgraded?”</p><p>“Exclusivity…” he whispered resignedly.</p><p>“I don’t believe you! Oh my goodness! Let’s see the calluses!”</p><p>“You idiot! Keep your voice down!” he huffed glowering.</p><p>“What about the Australian beefcake?”</p><p>Her eyes twinkled slyly and coquettishly.</p><p>“I miss him, too… as well as the flexible Israeli, the hot Spanish, and that beast of Satan, the Chechen rugby player, remember him?”</p><p>“Charles, you slut!” she sentenced sternly. “And you gave up this hearty flock of cocks for the pilot? I’m impressed…”</p><p>“Yeah. So am I. And what’s worse is that I seriously think he’s worth it, Raven. Fuck…”</p><p>Charles let out another dreamy sigh. Raven mimicked a gag reflex.</p><p>He was head over heels. Completely. He missed Erik and wanted nothing more than to see him again.</p><p>Abstinence wasn’t easy for a man like Charles, who had given up the stability of a relationship so he wouldn’t have to decline any erotic invitations. But the thought of Erik was enough to keep him faithful: the only person he desired to make love to was Lehnsherr.</p><p>
  <em>Making love…</em>
</p><p>He was screwed. Completely screwed.</p><p>Later, when he finally got off work, he called Erik. They talked for over an hour. They told each other about their days, without either of them going into too much detail. Their professions were so far apart that gastro-enteric anastomoses or carburetor issues or team failures during pit stops were never topics of conversation.</p><p>Erik went on and on about how many different gins were produced in Italy and promised to buy some, so they could drink them together. Charles complained about Raven’s relationship with Steve and how he was dumb as a stump.</p><p>“Mhmm,” Erik bellowed, simulating excitement. “Handsome and stupid: my favorite type!”</p><p>“Are you calling me stupid?” ironized Charles.</p><p>“You’re not even that good looking, Liebling, come on!” he exclaimed laughing.</p><p>“Screw you!”</p><p>“Oh Charles! You don’t know how much I want to… Have you had sex?”</p><p>“What? No! Hadn’t we decided on fidelity?” he asked fidgeting.</p><p>He sensed Erik snickering. He knew how to tease him all the time, and punctually Charles fell victim to Lehnsherr’s plots like an imbecile.</p><p>“You’re kidding me, right?”</p><p>“Sex is sex. Even alone with yourself. I jerked off three times today,” he declared pompously.</p><p>“Three?!” Charles asked amazed.</p><p>“I think about you a lot…” Erik whispered in a low voice.</p><p>Xavier laughed to himself. He wished he could have had Erik right there next to him. To kiss him and make love to him.</p><p>“Erik?”</p><p>“Yes?”</p><p>His heart was pounding. He hadn’t imagined such a moment. He had never seriously fantasized about love and the future. In fact, he had long since resigned himself and adapted to a life of casual encounters and physical satisfaction. Love had never been necessary for Charles, until he met Erik.</p><p>He had wanted so much to have Erik in front of him and not on the other end of a phone…</p><p>“Charles? Did you have a stroke?”</p><p>“I love you.”</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>“I love you, Erik,” he reiterated resolutely.</p><p>“Wow… Charles…I, ehm...”</p><p>For was the first time since they had met Erik Lehnsherr was speechless.</p><p>“It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything, Erik” Charles reassured him placidly.</p><p>“Oh ok. Thank you,” Erik hastened to reply.</p><p>Charles was crossed by a burning disappointment. He had said those words with confidence, but the relief in Erik’s voice had hurt him. Shit…</p><p>Suddenly he imagined himself projected into the future, desperate and forlorn, living in the memory of Erik’s mouth and body, his voice and his smiles.</p><p>“Charles?” the persuasive voice of Lehnsherr distracted him from his paranoid thoughts. “Are you still there?”</p><p>“Yes…”</p><p>Erik laughed. What the fuck was he laughing about!</p><p>“Charles… I seriously think I fell in love with you the night you drooled on my shoulder while snoring. I was hoping to do one of those movie things, like super expensive dinner, wild sex and moonlight declarations. But I’m afraid those things don’t belong in our lives and you know what? I’m basically okay with that. I love you <em>just-Charles</em>, and when I come back you’ll have to choose: my place or yours.”</p><p>Charles sat back better, head back on the couch. He couldn’t stop smiling.</p><p>“My apartment is bigger” </p><p>“Deal.”</p><p>“I’m hanging up now.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“I feel like jerking off.”</p><p>“Can’t we just stay on the phone?” Erik whispered lasciviously.</p><p>“I’m embarrassed. Besides, I don’t think of you when I masturbate, Erik.”</p><p>“You slut!”</p><p>“You’re making me blush, Lehnsherr!”</p><p> </p><p>A curly blond head popped out of the front door. Her face covered by pizza boxes on which towered a giant bag.</p><p>“What did you bring?!”</p><p>“Pizza and ice cream! Italian night!” Raven said. “What time does the streaming of that pain in the ass competition start?”</p><p>“Ten minutes. They’re already lining up,” Charles explained excitedly.</p><p>They would be watching Erik’s race from the Monza racetrack in Italy. Four hours of automotive endurance racing. What a fucked up, boring sport…</p><p>Erik’s car was always the green and black Porsche 911 Rsr. The team had taken pole position, Erik was as excited as a schoolboy when he phoned Charles two hours earlier. He had spoken in bursts without ever stopping, explaining with technicalities, which Charles did not understand, why such a driver would have been screwed by such another given a certain starting position. Charles had let him talk pretending to be interested. In truth he only cared about hearing his voice, and the fact that he was so happy made it pleasant to hear him babble on about things he didn’t understand.</p><p>They greeted each other with a ‘<em>so will you watch me?!’ ‘Sure!’ ‘I love you'…</em></p><p>They were off. Both he and Raven only paid attention when they saw the green and black car or heard the reporter say ‘Porsche’. Otherwise they were drinking and eating, talking about work or gossiping about their colleagues.</p><p>After two and a half hours of those boring rumbles in the background they opened some scotch that Raven had brought back from a weekend in Scotland. They snickered as they recalled the silly things they did as kids to their parents; Charles was actually a petulant and very intelligent kid who was dragging around a stubborn and annoying little girl.</p><p>Raven got up to get more ice.</p><p>Suddenly she heard Charles scream.</p><p>“Raven! RAVEN!” the voice broken in his throat.</p><p>She ran into the living room and looked at the pc screen they were following the race from. The images were of the looped replay of an accident.</p><p>The accelerating car, after a masterful internal overtaking, lost control, spinning on the track an infinite number of times, scattering debris dozens of meters away. Finally the last crash against the side protections of the track.</p><p>The cockpit was deformed, the wheels exploded. A small fire on what was left of the hood.</p><p>Charles’ ears were deaf. The reporter spoke excitedly but he couldn’t hear. Then the word repeated, again and again.</p><p> </p><p><em>Porsche</em>.</p><p>And the name on the screen, below the images of the wrecked car: E. Lehnsherr, Ireland.</p><p>A green and black car.</p><p>
  <em>Get out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Get out of that car.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Stand. Nod and then shake your head, c’mon.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Get out.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Please…get out.</em>
</p><p> </p><p>But it didn’t happen. Erik didn’t get out of the cockpit.</p><p>Raven held her hands over her mouth, her eyes filled with tears.</p><p>“Raven…” whispered Charles. “That’s a big crash, right?” he said somewhere between a lapidary statement and a hopeful question.</p><p>“Yes…it’s bad, Charles” and in confirming what was obvious she held his hand tightly.</p><p>When the rescue team arrived, the door was already torn off and in a quick sequence Erik was extracted and placed on a spine board. They immediately removed his helmet. Charles looked at Raven and realized that none of this was a good sign: too fast, too excited.</p><p>His fears were confirmed when the CPR maneuvers began: a rescuer began rhythmically compressing Erik’s chest.</p><p>A moan escaped Charles’ lips as he slumped onto the couch.</p><p>“No…” his sister whined, sitting down next to him.</p><p>The critical care physician in charge of the team was at Erik’s head. The images were filmed from afar and sometimes the direction replayed the crash or the other cars in the queue behind the safety car.</p><p>The reporter said ‘<em>mobile reanimation unit'</em>. They framed the rescue team lifting the spine board, an AMBU balloon was glimpsed.</p><p>“They’ve intubated him,” Raven said. “They’re not massaging him anymore. ROSC was minutes away,” she spoke as if Charles was understanding, as if to comfort him. Normally he would have understood perfectly. He was a surgeon yes, but one of those knowledgeable ones who also served in emergency rooms. Polytrauma from car crashes, from precipitation, from assault. All cases he had seen and handled. But now he wasn’t getting it. His brain was disconnected.</p><p>He looked at Raven with a lost look.</p><p>“The heart rate, Charles. He must have stabilized quickly. They’re probably moving him to a trauma center now.”</p><p>Her voice shook.</p><p>They both knew that what had happened would change everything forever. It wasn’t like the movies. There was never a happy ending.</p><p>Charles closed the laptop.</p><p>“Charles…” Raven cried. “Charles I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she exploded holding him tightly.</p><p>“What do we do?” he asked softly.</p><p>“We wait. I promise I’ll get information somehow.”</p><p>
  <strong> <em>*** [Author's note: Chapter 2 - Alternate Ending starts from this point] ***</em> </strong>
</p><p>The director of the ICU department Raven worked for was of Italian descent. It only took him two phone calls the next morning to find out where Erik was and what condition he was in.</p><p>Charles waited in the hallway. He didn’t want to be there, he didn’t want them to know he was involved. It was enough to say that he was a close friend of Raven’s; after all, it was a kind of truth.</p><p>His sister joined him after more than an hour. Her eyes were pounding and hard.</p><p>Charles expected the word '<em>dead</em>'.</p><p>Since the previous night he had always had a ringing in his ears, as if constantly sensing his own blood flow.</p><p>“It’s serious. The cardiac arrest was secondary to brain damage.”</p><p><em>Brain damage</em>.</p><p>“The injuries are severe. They placed a catheter to read the endocranial pressure and it’s high. The damage is extensive, Charles.”</p><p><em>Extensive damage</em>.</p><p>“I’m sorry, honey. I’m…” she cried again, hugging him.</p><p>Five days later, in an ambulance equipped as a reanimation center paid for by the Porsche team, Erik was transferred to England.</p><p>Charles waited until the night shift had started before going into intensive care. Raven was there; even if she hadn’t been at work, she wouldn’t have left him alone, but she was.</p><p>Charles had seen dozens of patients in that condition. He knew what each of those infusion pumps, those catheters, those monitors were.</p><p>There was enough silence. The rhythmic sound of the ventilator and pulse oximeter were almost comforting.</p><p>Erik lay motionless, wrapped up to mid-chest in the white sheet. His handsome face swollen, his left side bluish. A neutral, unreal expression. The endotracheal tube was sticking out of his mouth, his head was bandaged by a turban held in place with a net. The small tube that measured the endocranial pressure came out of one side and connected to a transducer. The number on the screen was off the scale. They had turned off the alarm.</p><p>Charles took Erik’s right hand and squeezed it tightly. He was shaken by a sob. He didn’t want to burst into tears in front of the on-call staff that night. He didn’t want his relationship with the man to be known. He didn’t have the strength.</p><p>He stroked the hand of that body that had belonged to Erik until a week before. That body that Charles had desired and loved and that had recently become exclusively his. He gently brushed a cheek. He thought of all the times he had kissed and touched him, that cheek had been Erik’s too.</p><p>Erik was no longer there. In that bed there was only his body, with his beautiful long-fingered hands, his powerful chest and his beautiful mouth. Charles would have given everything to see that smile again. To see that absurd number of teeth come up before a kiss.</p><p>
  <em>Brain death.</em>
</p><p>Charles felt like screaming, but he had no refuge where he could scream his pain at the top of his lungs.</p><p>“Good evening.”</p><p>It was little more than a whisper. A weak, hoarse voice, of someone who had been screaming for hours, or crying for days…</p><p>Charles turned around. He saw in the woman the delicate nose and the big mouth, in the man who stood next to her the gray and blue eyes like the sky in January. He felt like passing out. It was an elderly couple, restrained and destroyed, at their son’s bedside.</p><p>“Good evening,” he replied politely.</p><p>The woman stared at Charles’ ID tag pinned to the pocket of his green uniform. Perhaps she was wondering why on earth a surgeon was caressing her son’s cheek.</p><p>Her eyes filled with tears as she whispered the name <em>Xavier</em>. Her husband reacted to that name, too.</p><p>“Are you… <em>Charles</em>?” Erik’s mother asked with her voice even more broken with emotion.</p><p>“Yes,” he replied. He didn’t understand. How did they know his name? C. F. Xavier, MD, there was nothing to identify him other than the picture on that name tag.</p><p>The woman approached him and put her hands on his shoulders.</p><p>“Erik has told us so much about you,” she explained, trying to smile at him. “I’m so sorry, dear.”</p><p>
  <em>Erik…</em>
</p><p>Erik had told his parents about him, <em>so much</em>.</p><p>“I’m Edie, this is my husband Jacob” she said simply. “His mom and dad” she specified looking down at her son’s body.</p><p>At that statement the woman couldn’t hold back her sobs. Charles hugged her tightly.</p><p>They stayed like that for a few minutes.</p><p>Silent tears streamed down the severe and dignified face of Jacob Lehnsherr, who joined in the embrace.</p><p>“Charles… tell us: what you would do in our place?” Edie asked painfully after she managed to calm down.</p><p>Charles knew exactly what she was referring to. He looked at them both respectfully, appealing to his solid professionalism.</p><p>“I would respect Erik’s wishes, without hesitation” he stated resolutely.</p><p>It was like saying out loud for the first time that Erik was gone. But it was certainly what he would have wanted.</p><p> </p><p>The funeral was held two days after the removal of organs and tissue.</p><p>Four lives were saved immediately by meeting Erik’s donor requirements. Others saw their quality of life and life expectancy improve in the days to come, and still others would receive parts of Erik to help them walk or see or remove scars.</p><p> </p><p>The following week a shipment arrived from Italy. It contained a selection of gins: <em>PhD gin</em> from the south of the country, Ginaro from a town called Brescia, <em>Yellow gin</em> from Lake Garda. Erik had shipped them as promised, as a surprise.</p><p>Charles arranged them in a display case in the living room.</p><p>He would never open them.</p><p>***</p><p>It was summer. It had been four months since Charles’ 42nd birthday and ten since Erik’s death.</p><p>He’d taken two weeks off to idle at home and do nothing but sleep and relax, save for a long weekend in Scotland spent hiking and drinking whisky.</p><p>“Shall I open another one for you?” his bearded guest asked, swinging the empty beer bottle in front of Charles’ face.</p><p>“How kind of you…yes, thank you” Charles replied smiling.</p><p>The man returned with two ice-cold bottles.</p><p>“Logan, why do you keep coming over?”</p><p>The Australian beefcake sat uncomfortably next to Charles. He looked at him sideways with a raised eyebrow, but the result of his expression had an unusual sweetness to it.</p><p>“Because I hold out hope that you’ll stop pining for the pilot someday, and come back and fuck me,” he stated as he winked at him and took a cigarette from the pocket of his unbuttoned shirt.</p><p>Charles looked at him sternly, curling his lips. Logan rolled his eyes impatiently and went out onto the small balcony.</p><p>Xavier silently drank his beer while Logan smoked without stopping staring at him.</p><p>“You know, bub, it gets better after a while.”</p><p>Charles just looked at him, waiting for him to continue.</p><p>“It doesn’t go away. The memory I mean. But it stops hurting and eventually you think about it and remember the good stuff, like the laughs or the going out and the sex, of course. And you don’t cry anymore, in fact maybe even laugh about it.”</p><p>He took two or three more puffs of smoke.</p><p>Charles watched him: he spoke knowledgeably. For the first time he saw Logan, whose last name he ignored, and not the Australian beefcake.</p><p>“My husband died five years ago of leukemia,” he said, tilting his head and stopping looking at Charles for a few moments. “He endured almost two years of that shit. Chemo, hospitalizations, marrow transplant. Eventually he passed away.”</p><p>He recounted everything in a neutral tone, without emphasis. He pierced Charles with his delinquent, voracious gaze.</p><p>Logan returned to the couch beside him.</p><p>“Husband? You?”</p><p>“Unbelievable, isn’t it? I only married him because he had a huge cock, don’t get too sentimental!”</p><p>Charles burst out laughing. Maybe for the first time in ten months.</p><p>“It makes more sense now…” he turned to look at him better. “Really, Logan: why do you come here? Can’t you find beer anywhere else?”</p><p>“I told you, Katyperry. I’m waiting for you to get over your grief to get laid. I want to make sure I’m there when it happens…”</p><p>Charles laughed again. “You are an animal without restraint,” he said as he stood up. He took off his shirt and pants.</p><p>“You can say that again, Charles” Logan called him by his name for the first time, as Charles walked over to straddle him. “Take off those panties too, while you’re at it” the Australian suggested  grabbing Charles' hips.</p><p>Charles abandoned himself in his mouth. He thought about the night at Ku Bar with Erik and smiled while Logan opened his fly to finally show off his attributes.</p><p>***</p><p>A year later there is a picture of Charles with Logan in which they smile happily.</p><p>Charles is serene, but the memory of Erik still hurts him.</p><p>Logan knows how to comfort him, to love him in his own way, without looking for a place in Charles' heart that can never be filled again.</p><p>Charles understands this, and he loves Logan for it as well.</p><p>When someone dies...dies. Those who stay have to make do. Charles is trying, as best he can.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>And now, the end is near</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And so I face the final curtain</em>
</p><p>
  <em>My friend, I’ll make it clear</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ll state my case, of which I am certain</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve lived a life that’s full</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve traveled each and every highway</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And more, much more</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I did it, I did it my way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Regrets, I had a few</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But then again, too few to mention</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I did what I had to do</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I saw it through without exemption</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I planned each charted course</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Each careful step along the byway</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And more</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Much, much more</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I did it, I did it my way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew</em>
</p><p>
  <em>When I bit off more than I could chew</em>
</p><p>
  <em>But through it all, when there was doubt</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I ate it up and spit it out</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I faced it all and I stood tall</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And did it my way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I’ve had my fill, my share of losing</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing</em>
</p><p>
  <em>To think I did all that</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And may I say, not in a shy way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way</em>
</p><p>
  <em>For what is a man, what has he got</em>
</p><p>
  <em>If not himself, then he has naught</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And to say the things that he truly feels</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And not the words of someone who kneels</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And the record shows</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I took all the blows</em>
</p><p>
  <em>And did it my way</em>
</p><p>Frank Sinatra, 1968</p><p>(Lyrics: Claude François and Paul Anka)</p><p> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Drive My Way - Alternate Ending</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Alternate ending to Drive My Way.</p><p>I wrote it after my beloved beta reader asked me to "give the guys a second chance".</p><p>I agree with her, they do deserve a second chance. It won't be a walk in the park, though.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>English is not my first language. I apologize for any mistake / poor choice of words.</p><p>All the medical procedures and terminology are real. The author is an actual physician.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The director of the ICU department for which Raven worked was of Italian descent. It only took him two phone calls the next morning to find out where Erik was and what his conditions were.</p><p>Charles waited in the hallway. He didn’t want to be there, he didn’t want them to know he was involved. It was enough to say that Erik was a close friend of Raven’s; after all, it was kind of true.</p><p>His sister joined him after more than an hour. Her eyes were pounding and hard.</p><p>Charles expected the word ‘<em>dead</em>'.</p><p>Since the previous night he had always had a ringing in his ears, as though he could constantly hear his own blood flow.</p><p>“The situation is serious, Charles. Yesterday they were able to stabilize him, thank God, for transport. When Erik arrived at the trauma center, they quickly evaluated him and took him right away to the operating room.”</p><p>Charles reacted immediately to that information: it was his field, he was a surgeon.</p><p>“What’s the injury balance?” he asked eagerly.</p><p>“Head trauma with hematoma at the site of impact and contralateral from recoil. Doesn’t appear to be a huge injury, endocranial pressure is under control. They intubated him, it seems, with a GCS of 5, but the impact was really violent, Charles.”</p><p>Raven seemed to feel compelled to justify and comfort him with the news of the deep coma. The lowest value on the Glasgow Coma Scale was 3…</p><p>“Go on,” he urged her dryly.</p><p>Raven hesitated a few moments, amazed at the sudden, apparent detachment with which her brother listened to the information. She went on as usual from top to bottom: head, trunk, abdomen, limbs.</p><p>Every district and apparatus that Raven named had a large or small, serious or negligible injury to note.</p><p>Erik was in every way a perfect example of polytrauma.</p><p>One of his lungs had been drained, his abdomen opened on an emergency basis for the real worrisome source of bleeding. He had undergone a splenectomy and, alas, an intestinal resection. He had a broken humerus, pelvis, and femur. External fixators had been placed, awaiting his ability to address stabilization surgeries.</p><p>Fortunately, Erik had no spinal damage, or at least not enough to cause concern. Raven reiterated that the most important thing was the outcome after resorption of the small cerebral hematomas and assessment of the presence of diffuse axonal damage. These were all injuries that could leave long-term, neurological outcomes and never bring Erik back, not as they had known him.</p><p>It wasn’t like the movies.</p><p>The happy ending wasn’t a hand moving across the white sheets and suddenly clasping that of their loved one. There were never eyes that opened in disbelief after a coma, an initial bewilderment to then regain awareness and eventually smile at the world.</p><p>Reality, if fate was favorable, was made of cispose eyes that did not open. Hands that shook slowly and randomly. Lost and dull looks. Words that didn’t come out or were repeated endlessly, always the same, incomprehensible and irritating. And saliva that wasn’t swallowed.</p><p>In reality there were no tears of joy or, at least, if they came, they lasted very little and were immediately replaced by frustration, pain, anger and boredom. Then shame, regret and, eventually, indifference were to follow.</p><p>For disability that hesitated after severe polytrauma strained, separated and created distance. Even among those who once thought nothing could tear them apart.</p><p>Charles knew this very well and wondered if he was ready, if it was up to him, if Erik was worth it.</p><p>He answered affirmatively all three questions.</p><p> </p><p>Erik underwent six surgeries before he could be airlifted to England.</p><p>He was kept in a medically induced coma at all times.</p><p>Each day Raven gave an account of his condition. Charles stayed with him every night before going home.</p><p>Erik regained consciousness after twenty days. Small signs: he shook his hand on command, protruded his tongue. He seemed to move all four limbs.</p><p>He underwent five more surgeries. Some scheduled and intended for fracture synthesis, others as an emergency for abdominal complications. Charles was the first operator on two occasions.</p><p>He felt like he was in a time bubble.</p><p>On one hand there was the patient who was the victim of a serious trauma, on which he intervened several times to save his life and guarantee a hypothetical recovery, always with impeccable professionalism and detachment. On the other hand there was the man who could have been the love of his life, suspended in a sort of limbo from which, perhaps, he would never return.</p><p>Charles missed Erik. He missed his toothy smile, his powerful arms holding him, his laughter, the lust that pervaded them when they were drunk.</p><p>He felt guilty thinking about himself and his frustration, instead of being grateful that Erik was alive. He felt horrible when, utterly annoyed, he left the ICU for yet another fit of Erik, who didn’t listen, didn’t cooperate, there was a doubt that maybe he didn’t always understand.</p><p>Charles would leave furiously, not quite able to understand against whom or what to direct his anger.</p><p>He cried silently.</p><p>Sometimes he wouldn’t come by to see Erik. He would make up work-related excuses.</p><p>And then he would feel like shit.</p><p>Erik remained hospitalized in the ICU for two months.</p><p>He was then transferred to a rehab ward.</p><p>He couldn’t walk and weighed about 132 pounds for 6 ft.</p><p>After three more months of screaming, pain, demoralization and fighting, Erik was finally released.</p><p>Charles offered to be his caregiver and Lehnsherr came to live in his home.</p><p>“Your parents will arrive over the weekend,” Charles said as he set down a cup of tea in front of Erik. “Your mother called me last night: they can’t wait to see you out of a hospital, you know.”</p><p>Erik looked out of the window. He probably wasn’t listening, lost in some paranoid lucubration or just focused on his own pain.</p><p>“Erik?” Charles called him with a disconsolate sigh.</p><p>The other man turned around slowly. He looked at Charles with his gray-blue eyes, like the January sky during a thunderstorm. They no longer shone. His gaze didn’t explore the room curiously, his eyebrow didn’t arch before he jumped at Charles.</p><p>“I heard that. All right,” he said atonically in a low voice.</p><p>He picked up the cup of tea with a skinny, scarred hand, which looked like every other part of his body, Charles reckoned.</p><p>It hurt to see Erik like that. It hurt to think about what Erik looked like the day they met, when fate spared him during that first accident. Thinking about that face and those muscles, the cheeky scowl with which he showed up at Raven’s to get Charles’ contact, his tight tank tops on nights spent in the clubs, the sex with him…</p><p>Charles approached him. It was the first time they had been alone in the certainty that no one would ever interrupt them.</p><p>He was torn between the shameful desire to tell Erik to fuck off and just walk away, leaving him on that stool, and the tenderness he felt observing him, aware that it was nobody’s fault, least of all Erik’s.</p><p>“Hey…” he chose the second option and stroked Erik’s head softly and then kissed it. “What do you want to eat?”</p><p>Erik closed his eyes for a few seconds, inhaling Charles’ scent. Then he flinched as if annoyed, without answering. He slowly stood up, his prosthetic hip would not allow him to do otherwise, and walked towards the bathroom clinging to furniture and chairs. Charles cashed in, sadly looking at his hunched shoulders and pajamas that looked empty.</p><p>He had to get out. He grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. He felt like crying, damn it, and he was so pissed.</p><p>“I’m going out for a minute,” he said in a broken voice.</p><p>“You don’t have to do that,” Erik replied flatly without turning around.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>He wanted to leave, but Erik hadn’t started a conversation since the incident, whatever he had to say deserved to be heard. Charles pushed back the tears with an effort and swallowed.</p><p>“Stand by me. You don’t have to do that. I can’t stand it,” he said sourly.</p><p>Charles couldn’t believe his ears. He opened his blue eyes wide and, without being able to help it, he was overwhelmed by irrepressible rage.</p><p>“What the fuck are you talking about, Erik?!” he hissed furiously.</p><p>After all those months, after all that pain, anguish, and fear, Erik was daring to say that he couldn’t stand having Charles around?!</p><p>Erik bent over further. As if he had been punched in the guts.</p><p>“I don’t need you, Charles. I don’t want you around,” he said again, still without turning around, leaning against the doorframe.</p><p>“You’re in my house, <em>asshole</em>,” Charles snarled.</p><p>“Yeah… as soon as I find an apartment I’m out of here” Erik replied bluntly and locked himself in the bathroom.</p><p>Charles would have wanted to beat him to death. And he was sure that it would have been an easily achievable desire. Erik was so frail, thin and emaciated that two well-aimed hooks would have been enough to kill him.</p><p>He forced himself to breathe deeply, trying to regain control.</p><p>He called upon his profession, his experience.</p><p>What was happening to Erik? Was it the post-traumatic psychiatric outcome? Was it irrational behavior due to residual brain damage?</p><p>Why had h e told him those things?</p><p><em>Erik</em>…</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>Charles cried sitting at the kitchen counter with his head in his hands.</p><p>He was so tired. So bitter.</p><p>What was the point of all this? Why had fate introduced him to this man and then snatched him away from him in such a cruel way?</p><p>Erik was a kind of ghost. The shadow of a man now unable to take care of himself, deprived of his beauty, his vigor, his whole life.</p><p>He refused to go to the support group, he refused psychotherapy and, now, he refused even Charles’ presence.</p><p>If Charles had let him go, Erik would have died for sure.</p><p>Charles looked up at the ceiling and wiped his eyes.</p><p>He waited five minutes for Erik to come out of the bathroom and try to talk to him, to understand what was going through his mind. But Lehnsherr didn’t move.</p><p>Charles walked to the door, feeling a stab in his stomach.</p><p>He could hear Erik on the other side crying with choked sobs. He sounded like a dying whimpering animal holed up in its lair.</p><p>“Erik,” he wailed. “Erik, open up.”</p><p>“Go away!” the other sobbed loudly.</p><p>“Erik, please…open the door” Charles said again in pain.</p><p>Sobs.</p><p>He tried in vain to force the handle. He was distressed and agitated.</p><p>“Erik, goddamn it! Open the fucking door! Erik…please… Erik,” Charles also cried, his forehead pressed against the wood that separated them.</p><p>In the bathroom Erik grumbled incessantly.</p><p>With a shove the door gave way and Charles collapsed next to the ghost of the man he loved. He found him curled up on the ceramic floor. He hugged him tightly and let him finish his outburst.</p><p>“It’s not fair for me to do this to you,” Erik finally whispered.</p><p>“You’re not doing anything to me, except pissing me off, Erik” Charles had a bitter, but sincere tone. “I love you”.</p><p>Erik kept his head on Charles’ shoulder.</p><p>“I know. And I can’t stand it, Charles.”</p><p>Once again he was blunt.</p><p>Charles stopped breathing for a few moments.</p><p>Without saying a word he helped Erik up and they changed the ostomy bag, then Erik holed up in bed.</p><p>Charles left the house right after.</p><p>He didn’t want to think, he didn’t have to think.</p><p>He picked up the phone and sent a message.</p><p>
  <em>Are you busy?</em>
</p><p>It had been more than six months since he had last seen him.</p><p>
  <strong>Katyperry … what a surprise. I’m free.</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Can we meet?</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>I’ll come over to you.</strong>
</p><p><em>No, not at my place</em>.</p><p><strong>Okay</strong>.</p><p>Logan sent him his address.</p><p>It was a messy two-room apartment, full of stuff and clothes all over the place. A worn surfboard was hanged on wall, with a broken leather sofa underneath.</p><p>The man looked at Charles curiously, perhaps because of the long beard or the too-hard stare.</p><p>“Hey, it’s been a while” he approached with a grin.</p><p>“Fuck me,” Charles said bluntly.</p><p>“Woah, Chuck ! No preamble, huh!”</p><p>“Shut up, I don’t want to talk. Just fuck me!”</p><p>It was supposed to be an order, but it came out more like a prayer.</p><p>Either way, Logan didn’t need to.be told twice and abided by the request. He didn’t ask any questions, didn’t demand to know why Charles was there, or why he hadn’t wanted to see him at his place as in the past.</p><p>He did what Charles asked, loudly and for as long as he had to.</p><p>A short time later Charles got dressed and left.</p><p>“Can I call you again?” he asked before leaving.</p><p>“You have my number, bub,” Logan replied, lighting a cigarette thoughtfully.</p><p> </p><p>Raven fiddled with the pitcher full of coffee. She filled two cups, brusquely placing one of them in front of Erik. He looked at it skeptically: no one had given him coffee in ages. It seemed like coffee was not good for him.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” Raven asked dryly.</p><p>“Nothing, it’s the coffee: I thought I couldn’t drink it,” he said.</p><p>Raven rolled her eyes as if bored.</p><p>“Do I look like I give a damn if you drink coffee, Erik?”</p><p>“Oh…you’re mad at me,” he said softly without looking at her.</p><p>“Why wouldn’t I be? You’re an asshole. If you think I’m going to stand and watch you shatter my brother’s heart you’ve got it wrong,” she threatened harshly.</p><p>Erik didn’t respond, but merely sipped coffee for the first time in what seemed like decades.</p><p>“Charles doesn’t deserve this,” he whispered.</p><p>“No, he doesn’t. And neither do you. No one ever does. If you want to spend the rest of your existence feeling sorry for yourself, go ahead. But don’t kill my brother with ingratitude, indifference, or even worse, gratuitous nastiness to give vent to your anger. Charles loves you and has chosen to stand by you. Be fucking grateful. I know your life sucks now, but if you keep hurting Charles, I swear to God Erik, it’s going to be hell!”</p><p>She was inches from Erik’s face. And there was no sarcasm in her gaze.</p><p>“I can’t,” he puled.</p><p>“Then go away. Go and let yourself die far away from Charles,” she said aloud, grimacing.</p><p>“Okay” was Erik’s sad reply.</p><p><em>Shit</em>…</p><p>Charles was going to kill her.</p><p>“Okay my ass, Erik!” she yelled. “Come on! You survived, you’re here…” her voice broke at the memory of the months she’d spent sharing Charles’ anguish over Erik’s fate and all the shifts she’d spent taking care of him while he was in ICU.</p><p>Erik looked at her touched.</p><p>“I want my life back, Raven,” he puled as he never felt more fragile.</p><p>“It’s not coming back, not the one you had before. But you’re blessed with a second chance. And you’re not alone, either, Erik. Please…”</p><p>“It’s like I am depriving him of his life” he said suddenly. “Before, when I was in a coma, when I had the surgeries, I couldn’t stop Charles from giving up his life to be by my side. But now…now I can let him go.”</p><p>He looked at Raven with desperate eyes.</p><p>“But my brother doesn’t want to go anywhere if you’re not with him, you idiot! He’s never been a smart one, we can’t help it,” she sighed, shrugging sarcastically, her eyes filled with tears. “You and Charles deserve a chance, Erik.”</p><p>Lehnsherr smiled softly, using far fewer teeth than he would have in the past, but Raven saw the handsome pilot again anyway.</p><p> </p><p>Erik always tried not to undress in front of Charles. By now Xavier had noticed this and tended to respect that modesty that was once unknown to them. Erik couldn’t stand looking at his body tortured by all those scars as it was, but most of all he hated that damned ostomy bag. Charles was well aware of how much people suffered from what, for a surgeon, was just the necessary choice to protect a traumatized abdomen.</p><p>He had heard dozens of patients ask him in despair how long they would have to endure it, when they would be reoperated, when everything would be back to the way it was.</p><p>For some of them it had been a definitive choice, one that condemned them to live forever with a <em>reservoir of shit attached to their belly</em>, as Erik angrily defined it. And Charles, as always, let him vent freely.</p><p>Fortunately, in the disaster that had been Lehnsherr’s body over the past year, the day had come for his admission for yet another surgery, and this time it would be to remove the damn bag.</p><p>“Will you be there?” asked Erik as they prepared to leave. “In the operating room…” he specified.</p><p>“Of course,” affirmed Charles.</p><p>“And you’ll be the one operating on me?” he asked again with apprehension.</p><p>“I’ll be there with you, Erik. Every moment, I promise” Charles reassured him as he moved closer.</p><p>Erik’s eyes looked huge, so wide in that gaunt, hollowed-out look. He was tired, terrified of going back to the hospital and Charles wished he could have reassured him more.</p><p>“I’ll always be with you,” he said again before kissing him.</p><p>Erik, along with other things, didn’t really remember what it was like to kiss Charles anymore. He remembered how good it felt and how he always wanted to do it. When their lips touched and then opened, when Charles held him close, and Erik brushed his tongue with his own, it all came back, and it was clear to him why he liked kissing Charles so much.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Lehnsherr whispered.</p><p>“For what?”</p><p>“For this year, for what I put you through,” he whispered embarrassed.</p><p>Charles didn’t answer, but merely hugged and kissed him again.</p><p>“Come on, Erik,” he urged him. “It’ll be nothing compared to everything you’ve been through.”</p><p> </p><p>Charles performed the surgery together with Kovač, who wanted to assist him out of pure courtesy. A recanalization is not a complex operation, but his boss imposed his presence as a compromise. According to him, there was somewhat dubious ethics in performing surgery on one’s own partner.</p><p>Erik faced the post-operative course in the hospital as all those who have faced numerous surgeries and post-traumatic shock: he became unbearable and intolerant to anything.</p><p>He was in pain all the time, didn’t want to be attended to by staff, didn’t want to eat or stand up.</p><p>Charles was exasperated and, again, crushed by the guilt his poor tolerance brought him.</p><p>“Fuck you!”</p><p>“Erik…” Charles said softly, his voice tired.</p><p>“You said it was nothing!” Erik ranted. “That it wouldn’t hurt! You’re full of shit! Go away!”</p><p>Charles stood for a few seconds, watching Erik curled up in bed with his back to him.</p><p>He knew perfectly that Erik’s reaction was normal, that his tolerance was down to the bone, that he’d endured too much pain to tolerate even a little more than discomfort, that the painkillers were having less effect… but he still felt like smacking him around.</p><p>He walked out of the hospital and wrote to Logan.</p><p>
  <em>Hi, I need to not think.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>Are you coming here?</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>Would you like a drink, too? My treat.</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>But then we stop here!</strong>
</p><p><em>Sure</em>.</p><p> </p><p>“Charles?” Raven was incredulous. She called around ten o’clock in the evening. “Where are you?”</p><p>“Out,” he answered dryly overcoming the chaos of the bar he was in.</p><p>“I prescribed some morphine for Erik. He’s better now. He’s asleep.”</p><p>“Mmhm okay,” he said distractedly.</p><p>“Charles…”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“No, nothing.”</p><p>Raven hung up thoughtfully. Charles was in a club and sounded drunk.</p><p>Raven looked at Erik who was now sleeping due to morphine, his mouth slightly bent in a grimace.</p><p>She stroked his head and prayed that Charles wouldn’t regret that night too much.</p><p>Charles didn’t come home that night. He stayed at Logan’s after riding him more than once on his ugly, smashed couch.</p><p>The next day he forgot about Erik’s discharge. Erik waited for him in vain, sitting fully dressed on the edge of the hospital bed.</p><p>Raven, who was getting off the night shift, drove Erik home.</p><p>They were silent for a while. Then she said how worried she was about Charles, that this wasn’t like him.</p><p>“He’s fine. He must have just needed to be on his own.”</p><p>“He forgot to take you home, Erik.”</p><p>“No… he probably must have told me,” he lied. “I must have forgotten. Yes, he definitely told me.”</p><p>He sustained the lie and convinced Raven that she could go home and rest. He would be fine, his brother would be back soon.</p><p>Charles did not return home until after noontime. He was disheveled, tired, his clothes wrinkled.</p><p>He stared at Erik. They were separated by an awkward, almost suffocating silence.</p><p><em>Fuck</em>.</p><p>“I’m going to take a shower,” he said before disappearing.</p><p>He was consumed with shame: he had forgotten about Erik.</p><p>He’d forgotten to take him home on the day of his discharge.</p><p><em>Fuck</em> .</p><p>When he returned to the kitchen Erik had made some tea.</p><p>Charles couldn’t look at his face.</p><p>“Did you sleep outside?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Did you get laid?”</p><p>“Yes…”</p><p>Erik stared at his cup of tea and drank some.</p><p>“You did good,” he said. “I’m sorry, Charles. I’m sorry for turning into a nightmare for you.”</p><p>“I just told you I cheated on you, and you are the one who apologizes?”</p><p>“Charles… it’s been over ten months, I would have been worried if you hadn’t. Tell me you’ve done it on a regular basis, please.”</p><p>“Just one more time… Erik, I… we…”</p><p>“’We’ was before last October.”</p><p>Charles felt himself freeze. He lowered his gaze, waiting for Erik to end their relationship. But Erik smiled. Maybe the brain damage really had made him crazy.</p><p>“This is something new,” he concluded, pointing at both of them. “Come on, <em>just-Charles</em>, do you see me?! You’d never even bother to look at an extra from Schindler's List! You like the big blokes,” he said laughing.</p><p>Charles had a knot in his throat. Erik laughed, and he did so with all his teeth and his eyes were once again bright.</p><p>“You are the one I want, Erik.”</p><p>“Nice try, but I’m not having sex with you!”</p><p>They kissed repeatedly, just like they had that morning almost two years ago.</p><p>Erik had been wrong: they made love. For the first time in all those months, slowly. Charles was afraid Erik might break for he was so fragile. Erik could barely stand and was short of breath but, as he said afterwards, they brought home an acceptable result.</p><p> </p><p>One morning, a few weeks later, Erik was eating breakfast. He had resumed a protein-intensive diet to increase muscle mass along with physical therapy and strength training at the gym.</p><p>Charles watched him eat his protein granola with gusto and smiled: it was beautiful to see him like that. Erik noticed he was being watched and barely looked up at Charles.</p><p>“What?” he said with his mouth full, as he noisily chewed some almonds.</p><p>Charles smiled wider.</p><p>“Nothing. I’m glad your appetite’s back,” he asserted. Then he got a more serious and annoyingly professional air. “Did you evacuate your bowels today? Is your bowel still regular?”</p><p>Erik froze: he had his cheeks swollen with cereal and his mouth open.</p><p>He swallowed as he rolled his eyes and raised an eyebrow.</p><p>“Charles, honest to God: if you ask me one more time if I shit regularly I’ll club you on the back!”</p><p>Charles blushed a little.</p><p>“Oh come on…you know I can’t help myself. I need to know if my work is functioning.”</p><p>“Charles…”</p><p>“Erik, I just asked you,” he tried to explain punctiliously.</p><p>“Cut it out! Look I mean it: I’m going to beat you up!” Erik threatened sullenly.</p><p>Charles laughed.</p><p>“You must catch me first, you wreck!” he teased him.</p><p>“Uh-oh very witty. And mature. Go ahead, and take the piss out of me. Just wait until I get a hold of myself and I’ll make you stop being an idiot!”</p><p>Charles looked at him lovingly cupping his face with his hands.</p><p>“I can’t wait…” he said slyly.</p><p>Erik raised his eyebrows. Then he bent his lips into a ravenous grin.</p><p>“Well, I’d already have an idea of how to get you to pay for it right away, if you care so much…”</p><p>“Oh really? And let’s hear it: what would that be?”</p><p>“Come over to the couch and let me impale you properly. Let’s see if your thoughts will then be about my regular alvus or yours!”</p><p>Charles burst out laughing.</p><p>“You’re really tempting me, Erik,” he said lasciviously.</p><p>“Wait till I trudge to the living room, doctor!”</p><p>They laughed again.</p><p>It all seemed so far away: Erik’s rambling screams, his unmanageable pain, his rejection of everything and everyone. And that anguish, that heart pang that Charles had had stuck to him like tar for months. The deceitful awareness, due to his experience as a physician, that it would go wrong, that Erik would never resume a normal life, would never again be next to him proposing to make love or even just wanting to kiss him.</p><p>And yet there he was. Still thin and a little fragile, still far from resuming his life. But he was there indeed. With Charles, laughing and assuming they’d be having sex like a year ago, as if that damn accident had never happened.</p><p>Erik was there and Charles was fucking happy with that smile and those eyes fixed on him.</p><p>They had a chance and both were certain of one thing: they weren’t going to waste it.</p><p> </p><p>It was like breathing clean air again and no longer living in a stuffy hole.</p><p>Erik was getting better and better in his body, but more importantly, in his spirit.</p><p>He regularly took antidepressants which, at last on a therapeutic regime, helped him to maintain a proactive attitude. He attended the support group and underwent psychotherapy sessions.</p><p>He gained 22 pounds of muscle mass and finally lost the dreadful appearance of a terminally-ill. Now no one looked at him with compassion and sadness anymore.</p><p>Erik kept his hair slightly longer, disheveled, to hide his scars. The beard on his face was present at various lengths, depending on the idleness that characterised his relationship with his razor.</p><p>Charles was happy. Erik was a different man from the sexy, brash driver he had met long ago. He was no longer the hunk that had made Charles sigh and drown in his sex appeal, but he was back to being a handsome man and he was improving every day.</p><p>He allowed Charles to fondle each of his scars during intimacy, although he tolerated only looking at them the bare minimum. He especially hated the outcome of the ostomy closure: a sort of puckered roundel, quite insignificant compared to the marks that disfigured the rest of his abdomen or his hips. But letting Charles kiss every inch of those reddish signs bound them inextricably, and there were so many of those marks…the time it took to stroke them all was a fully respectable erotic foreplay.</p><p> </p><p>One day Charles wrote to Logan.</p><p><em>Hello</em>.</p><p>
  <strong>Katyperry! What’s up?</strong>
</p><p><em>All is well. I wanted to… say hi</em>.</p><p>
  <strong>You’re not asking me to chat, are you?</strong>
</p><p>
  <em>For once you could make an effort…</em>
</p><p><strong>I’m glad you’re happy, Charles</strong>.</p><p>
  <em>Wow, I didn’t think you knew my name!</em>
</p><p>
  <strong>I just checked it on your profile. Don’t get your hopes up.</strong>
</p><p><em>Thanks, Logan</em>.</p><p><strong>Anytime, Katyperry. Say hi to the hot pilot for me</strong>.</p><p><em>No, I don’t think I will</em>.</p><p><strong>Too bad… the three of us would have been fun</strong>!</p><p><em>Good-bye, Logan</em>.</p><p><strong>Have a nice life, bub</strong>.</p><p> </p><p>Erik returned to work exactly one year after the accident.</p><p>He came home excited, brought some ice cream, and he twirled the cane he often used to walk better.</p><p>Charles raised an eyebrow looking at him skeptically.</p><p>Erik waited with a grin to be asked why he was so elated. Charles didn’t want to give him that satisfaction and forced himself to ignore Erik as much as possible.</p><p>“Oh come on! Ask me why I’m so excited!” Lehnsherr blurted out at last, no longer resisting.</p><p>Charles rolled his eyes holding back a laugh.</p><p>“Maybe later… right now I’m looking for a recipe I’d like to try for tonight,” he said absentmindedly, as he scrolled through the pages on his tablet.</p><p>Erik curled his lips, his eyes narrowed to slits.</p><p>“You’re such an asshole! Alright, I’m going back to work for Porsche next month,” he announced pompously.</p><p>Charles almost fell off the stool. He understood perfectly well that Erik wasn’t joking, he couldn’t have been: he was too enthusiastic and happy.</p><p>His ears started buzzing like that time with Raven in front of the laptop.</p><p>It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t be true at all.</p><p>The psychiatric outcome of the trauma certainly had to be worse than expected. Erik had perhaps begun to develop psychosis…</p><p>Charles' mouth was dry and he couldn’t find the words.</p><p>“Charles,” Erik began. “Listen to me…”</p><p>“Fuck you!” Xavier finally managed to say, interrupting him.</p><p>“No, listen to me, Charles” he insisted seriously.</p><p>“No! No! What the fuck are you talking about?! <em>Porsche</em>?! The cars! Erik for Christ’s sake!”</p><p>He was furious. How the fuck could he think he'd go back to work where he almost died?! How could he even imagine that Charles would tolerate seeing him in danger again!</p><p>“Charles!” This time the tone didn’t allow interruptions. “Listen to me,” he repeated more softly. “I will never drive again. Even if I wanted to…I can’t sit in those cockpits for hours, you know that. Besides, I can hardly see with my left eye. So stop having a hissy fit and listen to me, please,” Erik begged him, taking Charles’ hands between his.</p><p>Charles clenched his teeth and nodded.</p><p>“I’m an engineer, a test driver and I <em>was</em> a pilot, as I imagine you can remember…” he gave a bitter smile. “I’ll be part of the technical team. Just theory, Charles. I may be in the pits, I may be on the road, but I won’t be in a racing car, alas,” he said with regret.</p><p>Charles lowered his gaze and slowly shook his head.</p><p>“If you could, you’d go back to racing, wouldn’t you?”</p><p>“Yes, if I could. But I can’t: you’re here.”</p><p>Charles looked at him not sure he understood.</p><p>“I could never do that to you, Charles,” he said with soft eyes. “I love you too much.”</p><p>Teeth. Dozens of white teeth.</p><p>
  <em>Go to hell, Erik…</em>
</p><p>“What am I going to do when you’re gone for months during the championships?” Charles whined, aware that that sort of vacation, with Erik finally back to life, handsome and fit, always  at home and ready to welcome Charles into his arms, was clearly over.</p><p>“Well, you’re going to call me, I guess. You'll go out and get drunk with Raven and you'll wank off a lot!” he exclaimed with a laugh.</p><p>“Very funny…” was Charles’ sarcastic reply.</p><p>“Oh! And you’ll come with me whenever you can, dear, like other spouses do. We’ll stay in wonderful hotels and, I swear: I’ll take you to crazy places,” he listed enthusiastically.</p><p>“What did you just say?”</p><p>Charles had his big blue eyes wide open. Erik didn’t think they could get any bigger.</p><p>“Excuse me?”</p><p>He had nailed it. There, that moment. He’d imagined it that fucking day, after he’d hung up the phone ‘<em>so will you watch me?!’ ‘Sure!’ ‘I love you’.</em></p><p>It had only been delayed a year.</p><p>“You said… you said 'spouses' ” Charles said quietly and with circumspection. He was afraid that saying it out loud would wake him up.</p><p>“Did I say that?”</p><p>Erik had a gleeful expression on his face, a sly smirk.</p><p>“Erik…”</p><p>“Well, if I’ve said it by now…we might as well get married. Then I can have my husband with me,” he said, winking at him.</p><p>Charles wanted to scream.</p><p>And after a year, or perhaps for the first time in his entire life, Charles felt his heart burst in his chest.</p><p>He jumped to Erik’s neck and kissed him as if he wanted to devour him.</p><p>“Ouch! Ugh! Charles! My back…” Erik complained in a grimace.</p><p>“You’re a wreck!" Charles mocked him and kissed Erik's nose.  </p><p>“What do you think, doctor? Look, I’m only marrying you for my own benefit: I’m securing health care!”</p><p>They laughed, a lot.</p><p>Their happy life together was coming back and they had all intention to savour every moment of it.</p><p> </p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Perfect Three - Alternate Ending Epilogue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Everything's in coming back to normal. Erik is recovering, Charles is happy. He and Erik are happy together. All is fine and quiet, until it isn't...</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>English is not my first language. I apologize for any mistake / poor choice of words.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Harrods on the weekends was some kind of weird mixed salad on display at the self-service restaurant for far too long. Not so bad that it had to be thrown away instantly, but not so fresh either. A stir, a squeeze of lemon, and the chef would convince the maître to leave it in the buffet for another day.</p><p>Bored Londoners, drives if tourists from all over the world, sales representatives, television and radio crews, journalists…</p><p>Harrods on weekends and holidays was revolting. It wasn’t that it was so annoying that you couldn’t get in, but once you were inside, you yearned to get out as soon as possible.</p><p>Charles waited on the sidewalk on Brompton Road with his fists in his pockets and a fund of uncontrolled nervousness. He had tried to relax, he had eaten a shamefully expensive Grom’s sherbet, he had bought yet another mini Teddy Bear by Harrods to make Raven laugh, and now he was waiting on the damn sidewalk full of people.</p><p>Suddenly someone grabbed him by the elbow, if it was yet another tourist asking for information, Charles swore he’d tell them to…</p><p>“Ohi! Katyperry, is that you?!”</p><p>In front of Harrods?!</p><p>On a Saturday?</p><p>In broad daylight, too!</p><p>“Logan…” he couldn’t help but smile.</p><p>The Australian beefcake looked at Charles joyfully, unable to hide the sincere happiness of having met him. Charles felt flattered. He would have liked to give free rein to the pleasure Charles, too, felt at seeing Logan again after so long, but his nervousness began to increasingly gnaw at him from the inside. He even began to shift his weight from one foot to the other without control.</p><p>“It’s been a long time since… well, I’ve heard from you. What’s up, bub?”</p><p>“Good. I’m doing good, how about you? You look great,” he said with circumstance.</p><p>But in fact Logan was looking just fine: physically fit as he always was, but with something extra. Maybe it was the barely-there, well-groomed beard, the shorter hair, the freshly laundered, ironed clothes…</p><p>He was simply handsome, there was no other way to describe him.</p><p>And Charles felt less and less comfortable.</p><p>And more and more agitated.</p><p>“Thanks, bub,” he said smugly. “What are you up to here? Who are you waiting for?”</p><p><em>Shit</em>.</p><p>Logan was like someone who had lived three lives in the time of one: the experience of three existences compressed into one individual. There was no way he was going to get away with this.</p><p>“I… I,” Charles stammered.</p><p>But why the hell was he stammering, anyway!</p><p>Charles was annoyed for one reason, but Logan’s sudden appearance had unsettlted him for another.</p><p>“I’m waiting for someone. He’s picking me up,” he said eventually and a little too fast..</p><p>“Uh… you seem to be quivering,” Logan told him, winking in a blatant manner. “The pilot, I bet!”</p><p>And what could one say? Logan had lived so intensely and long enough to be something of an oracle of interpersonal relationships. The fact, then, that he was more interested in mating than any other kind of interaction was, after all, a detail.</p><p>“Yeah…” Charles admitted, blushing a little.</p><p>Logan snickered.</p><p>“What’s the matter, Katyperry? Don’t you want to be seen with me?”</p><p>Accurate. He’d hit the bull’s eye.</p><p>“What! No! Why would I? We… you and I don’t…”</p><p>He felt like a real jerk. What the hell was happening to him? Logan had been a distraction from the distant past, what reason did he have to feel this way?</p><p><em>Hell</em>…</p><p>In the distance the roar of a BMW engine could be heard. It was an R1200R.</p><p>Charles had known this well since the day that asshole Erik had shown up at the house exposing even more teeth than usual. Something Charles believed to be humanly impossible, actually.</p><p>“A motorcycle?! A fucking motorcycle?! You’re completely out of your mind! Erik…”</p><p>But there had been no way, and to be fair, he hadn’t even been so insistent on getting him to desist from riding something that might again try to kill him. Erik was so excited and needy to feel alive again.</p><p>Erik got his satisfaction in a completely different way from Charles. In common they had <em>themselves, their love</em>. Everything else was millions of light years away.</p><p>Erik liked engines, obviously, and speed. To experience and live the speed. Erik was always going fast, at everything: talking fast, driving fast, running, once upon a time, fast, eating fast. Erik did everything fast, everything right away. And when he finished, he would start over with something else even faster.</p><p>He had much more in common with Raven than with Charles.</p><p>Xavier, on the other hand, was thoughtful. He was precise, able to redo and revise a project until it was perfect, taking his time.</p><p>Not that he was slow, far from it, but speed was, for him, the equivalent of approximation.</p><p>If you go fast you can never, in any way, be accurate.</p><p>Erik would freak out when Charles supported this theory of his. He would always retort by saying that he was the one who couldn’t get something right quickly and effectively, and they would argue for hours.</p><p>Charles had driven a car with Erik as a passenger half a time on a short vacation. They had rented a rust-colored Peugeot 3008 and were driving along a romantic road through hills and vineyards in Italy.</p><p>Erik had pulled him over. He had literally jumped out of the car, pulled Charles out of the cockpit by his shirt with one hand, as if fishing out a child who had fallen into the sea, and taken the driver’s seat.</p><p>From then on, Lehnsherr’s rule was that Charles could drive in his presence only in the event of: Erik’s death, Erik’s coma, Erik’s internal bleeding, or Erik’s impending labour. The last statement always amused him greatly.</p><p>Charles had had no chance to retort, and every time he sat next to Erik in a car, he prayed to God that the driver had already used up his crash-test bonus with fate.</p><p>The sound of the motorcycle was closer.</p><p>Charles thought about how much he actually enjoyed scampering around sitting behind Erik on that fucking motorcycle.</p><p>He liked hugging Erik on their trips out of town, holding him by the waist and enjoying the view. It was all enjoyable until Erik hit the gas and started whizzing around like a madman. Then Charles would get pissed, grab him harder, Erik would slow down and he wouldn’t speak to him for over an hour. When they started up again, the sequence repeated itself. Inexorable.</p><p>That bike was such a nuisance.</p><p>But relying on the laws of statistics, Charles was convinced that the chances of Erik being the victim of another fatal accident were too small: he used that vehicle very little, he was often on the road and his pelvis and hip synthesis didn’t allow him to ride for too long.</p><p>Erik arrived, of course, quickly pulling up right in front of Charles and Logan who seemed to have painted that fucking grin on his face.</p><p>“Hi” greeted Lehnsherr excitedly as he lifted the front of his jet helmet.</p><p>“Hi,” replied Charles more mournfully.</p><p>Erik’s attention was immediately caught by the tall, lanky man behind Charles.</p><p>“Hello pilot,” the Australian said. Charles blushed like a fool. “I’m Logan,” and he reached out his hand, shaking Erik’s gloved one tightly.</p><p>It took Lehnsherr a millisecond to frame Logan. He had fucked dozens of men like him: he called them the pirates. They were the buccaneers of the nightclubs, the bad guys looking only for easy sex. The ones who disappeared into the darkness like thieves once they were done.</p><p>“It’s a pleasure. Have we met before?” he asked immediately, scanning Logan’s face.</p><p>The Australian lit a cigarette snickering. Charles’ palms were sweaty.</p><p>“Is it possible we shared something?” Logan said puffing smoke.</p><p>Charles almost chocked and he started coughing. Erik quickly shifted his gaze to his partner, then smiled back at Logan.</p><p>“Help me remember…”</p><p>Logan paused for what seemed like a very long time to Charles. He and Erik looked at each other and it seemed like a race to see who had the most cocky grin.</p><p>“Oh well, it’s been a while,” Logan began. “Charles put his tongue in my mouth, as I recall, while you, in yours, had something definitely more interesting!” he exclaimed piercing Charles with his delinquent gaze and immediately winking at him.</p><p>Charles skin tone was deep red. At least Logan had mentioned the night at the Ku Klub and nothing else.</p><p>Erik remained deadpan for a few moments, then broke into a smile full of understanding.</p><p>“Mmhm…Without being on my knees I didn’t recognize you, Logan. Charles’ tongue <em>alone</em> must have hit you pretty hard that night to remember everything so well.”</p><p>He said it simply, almost softly, but he'd hit the mark like a sniper. Charles face was turning from deep red to purple and he had stopped looking at both of them, his gaze fixed on his feet. Logan had a tugged smile and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips.</p><p>“Yeah…” he replied. “Hard to forget someone like Charles.”</p><p>It was all so awkward. All Charles could think about was how to get out of that situation.</p><p>Suddenly he grabbed the helmet attached to the seat of the bike and put it on.</p><p>“We have to go” he said quickly. “Bye, Logan” he mumbled without looking him in the eye.</p><p>“Bye Katyperry” the Australian replied and stroke his arm lingering on his elbow. He paid particular attention to the fact that Erik was careful to register that touch.                                            “Pilot, it’s been a pleasure, shall we say. Maybe I’ll see you again,” and in making that assumption, he clearly winked at Lehnsherr .</p><p>Erik merely nodded and gave a complicit smile that he couldn’t quite turn off. He lowered the visor of his helmet and hit the gas, zigzagging between the cars in the traffic.</p><p>Charles held on to the rear grab bars, hot and uncomfortable.</p><p>Logan was the only man he’d had sex with, other than Erik, in the last two years. And it was the same man who had comforted him by fucking him and letting him fuck him while Erik lay destroyed in a hospital bed.</p><p>Charles was uncomfortable and couldn’t climb back up from that pit of shame he had fallen into.</p><p>When they arrived home Erik stared at Charles’ back snickering. He had figured out exactly who Logan was and didn’t care at all. But he maliciously enjoyed seeing Charles gnaw at the situation.</p><p>He decided to tease him some more.</p><p>“So… Logan, huh?” he began slyly. “The one from the night at Ku…” he said with a smirk.</p><p>“Yeah…” Charles’ voice was a whisper. “Him,” he confirmed with a tugged smile.</p><p>“And that’s it?” Erik asked bluntly. “He seemed particularly attracted, as if he knew you much better,” he continued persuasively. “From my experience I can say that you have that effect at a stage after the kiss…” he said deceptively, looking at Charles straight in the eye.</p><p>Charles’ face was again deep red.</p><p>“I told you, some time before we had <em>met</em>,” he mumbled.</p><p>“Yeah… couldn’t he be, I am only guessing here eh, perhaps, one of the guys you fucked while I was in the hospital?” Erik was having a great time. Charles was completely overcome with shame.</p><p>“I…I…yeah,” he finally confessed. “The only one, actually. I’ve only ever slept with him,” he said in one breath.</p><p>Oh… this struck Erik a bit. He was convinced that Charles, during his convalescence, had had entirely casual encounters aimed at mere physical venting. Instead, he had only ever been with Logan. Interesting…</p><p>“Erik, look, I’m sorry I…” he paused not really knowing what to say. He was so uncomfortable!</p><p>“Do you know what I think, Charles?”</p><p>Erik had suddenly become serious, Charles felt the ground gave way under his feet and leaned against the wall.</p><p>“What?” he asked in a whisper.</p><p>Now what was he going to do? Make a scene? Would he have gotten angry? Would he have ranted and then walked out? Charles had no idea what Erik’s disapproving reaction would be. They’d never had that kind of discussion, there hadn’t been time between them, he had no idea what to expect.</p><p>“I think you…” he said softly as he approached Charles’ face. “I think you have fucking good taste, for fuck’s sake!” he exclaimed enthusiastically with his all-teeth smile. He looked mad. “I’m serious, dear: Logan’s a real hunk! A little rough-hewn, but cool! I wonder how he fucks… come on, tell me!”</p><p>Charles couldn’t believe it.</p><p>He was so surprised by Erik’s words that he was left speechless.</p><p>How could Erik even think that Charles felt like telling him about sex with Logan! Charles had sought Logan out in dejection and frustration. He did that to be comforted and feel less alone. He had lived everything with guilt, regretting it every time he had looked at Erik’s tired, suffering face when he was hospitalized.</p><p>“Erik, please…” he begged him.</p><p>“Come on! Tell me! It sounds promising…”</p><p>“Erik no,” he said resolutely.</p><p>“He seems agreeable…” Lehnsherr said winking.</p><p>“Erik! No!” Charles raised his voice.</p><p>For crying out loud…</p><p>Erik wanted to sleep with Logan, it was obvious.</p><p>Charles had experienced evenings of excess and sex with more than one man in the past, but they had always been casual encounters, dictated by mere lust and alcohol-induced disinhibition.</p><p>Erik had been his partner, Logan had been…some sort of strange friend with benefit?</p><p>It would have been too weird. Too intimate.</p><p>And then… Erik and Logan… had liked each other instantly. They seemed drawn to each other like magnets, both pervaded by the same eagerness.</p><p>No! Absolutely not! Charles would never be able to handle them together. And he wasn’t even sure he had any desire to share Erik with anyone, certainly not someone like Logan, so seductive and so damn good in bed!</p><p>“The fact that you’re thinking this long only intrigues me more, you know?” Erik got closer to Charles’ face. He couldn’t get the bitchy grin off his face. “He’s good, isn’t he? Better than me?” he asked with a pouty grin.</p><p>“Please stop.”</p><p>Charles tried to walk away but Erik tackled him, pushing him against the wall.</p><p>“Let’s call him,” he whispered in his ear, smooching his neck soon after. “I want to see…I want to see how he fucks you” Erik whispered raunchily biting Charles’ jaw.</p><p>“Erik… Erik stop it.”</p><p>But Erik had no intention of stopping.</p><p>He crushed him more and more, rubbing himself against him excitedly touching him everywhere.</p><p>“Let’s call him, we’re going to have so much fun” he proposed again sticking his tongue in Charles’ mouth.</p><p>“I said no, dammit! I don’t want to have a threesome with him…and you…. Erik… Erik, stop it” but he was so turned on and Erik’s caresses were always fucking perfect and effective.</p><p>“Don’t be a party pooper, Charles…”</p><p>He tried to object again, with less and less confidence and resistance.</p><p>He went along with Erik’s approach and they began to grope each other, never ceasing to entwine their tongues; he tried to undress Lehnsherr but he stopped him.</p><p>“Nah! <em>Katyperry</em>…” he said mocking him. “Call him!”</p><p> </p><p>A few hours later there were three exhausted bodies in their bed.</p><p>It had been overwhelming, fulfilling, and very challenging.</p><p>Charles was supine stared at the ceiling. To his right Logan was snoring softly, as he slept on his stomach, keeping one arm on Charles’ abdomen. On the other side Erik, lying on his side, his head resting on Charles’ shoulder, was fiddling with the few hairs Charles had below his navel.</p><p>Erik lifted his head and smiled at him. Then he kissed him softly.</p><p>Charles longed for that contact. He had grown accustomed by now to enjoying a different kind of lovemaking. That unbridled session of sex had exhausted and satisfied him, but at the same time he felt like something was missing.</p><p>They continued to kiss for a while, stroking each other, smiling and whispering sweet words. Charles broke free from Logan’s grasp, who didn’t move, and held Erik tighter. Erik pulled Charles on top of him and kept on fondling him.</p><p>He wanted Erik exclusively for himself. He wanted to be the only one to kiss that body and enjoy his attentions. In short they began to make love silently, slowly, next to Logan who seemed never to have woken up.</p><p>Suddenly the Australian opened one eye, with conceit, then huffed and turned around.</p><p>“Had I known I was ending up in bed with Scarlett O’Hara and Rett Buttler I’d brought insulin: you’re giving me diabetes!” he grunted grumpily, nudging them so he could lie better on his side.</p><p>Charles and Erik were gobsmacked at first, then burst out laughing, breathless and sweaty, but they didn’t stop.</p><p>“Make sure you don’t take all night,” Logan sourly urged them, but respectfully laid with his back towards them in what Charles understood to be a sincere and delicate act of modesty.</p><p> </p>
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